Product Description

Elvis Cole is Back--In a Desperate Fight to Clear his Name...

It's fire season, and the hills of Los Angeles are burning. When police and fire department personnel rush door to door in a frenzied evacuation effort, they discover the week-old corpse of an apparent suicide. But the gunshot victim is less gruesome than what they find in his lap: a photo album of seven brutally murdered young women -- one per year, for seven years. And when the suicide victim is identified as a former suspect in one of the murders, the news turns Elvis Cole's world upside down.

Three years earlier Lionel Byrd was brought to trial for the murder of a female prostitute named Yvonne Bennett. A taped confession coerced by the police inspired a prominent defense attorney to take Byrd's case, and Elvis Cole was hired to investigate. It was Cole's eleventh-hour discovery of an exculpatory videotape that allowed Lionel Byrd to walk free. Elvis was hailed as a hero.

But the discovery of the death album in Byrd's lap now brands Elvis as an unwitting accomplice to murder. Captured in photographs that could only have been taken by the murderer, Yvonne Bennett was the fifth of the seven victims -- two more young women were murdered after Lionel Byrd walked free. So Elvis can't help but wonder -- did he, Elvis Cole, cost two more young women their lives?

Shut out of the investigation by a special LAPD task force determined to close the case, Elvis Cole and Joe Pike desperately fight to uncover the truth about Lionel Byrd and his nightmare album of death -- a truth hidden by lies, politics, and corruption in a world where nothing is what it seems to be.

Chasing Darkness is a blistering thriller from the bestselling author who sets the standard for intense, powerful crime writing.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #601 in Books
• Published on: 2008-07-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

From Bookmarks Magazine
Elvis Cole has been around for more than 20 years, and he has aged like fine wine. Chasing Darkness contains the classic crime elements that have made Crais’s series so popular, but the novel seems, as a few critics commented, more like a straightforward crime thriller this time around. Material Witness felt that the novel was perhaps less psychologically intense than previous installments, but nonetheless still as compelling in its exploration of crime and backroom politics. A tight, plausible plot and a wholly unexpected ending kept critics turning the pages. In sum, “[t]he Cole books are first-rate entertainment. If you don’t know them, this one is a good starting point” (Washington Post).
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

About the Author
Robert Crais is the author of many novels, including the New York Times bestsellers The Last Detective, Hostage, and L.A. Requiem. Learn more about his work at www.robertcrais.com.

Customer Reviews

Another great book
This is another great book in the sreies. you dont need to start with the first book. Worth your money

Who green-lighted this copy&pasted prosaic plot and high-school writing?
This is my first [not quite sure how it won't be my last] read of Robert Crais. I was given the understanding that his books are relatively decent, so I went in quite optimistically (I've been looking for a new writer, as I have re-read Stephen King's books as much as I can for the time being, gone through the merry-go-round with Lawrence Block, and each of Lee Child's Reacher... and with Reacher, despite each book having essentially the same plot, I'm entertained. I didn't even have a problem with 'Nothing to Lose', as a number of people have).

But I don't understand someone can go through Chasing Darkness, which may have started decently, but switched to a plot outline dragged straight out of a high-school writing class.

As much as I'd like to take the time to explain how ridiculous the writing was [e.g., Our Hero, the P.I., seems to not be able to do a thing on his own, but has to have some "God of the Machine Benefactor" that is indebted to Our Hero for some reason and therefore completes whatever task needs completing at that particular time. Once said task is done, and another is engendered, another savior stumbles in.

But the absolute worst issue is that after the book starts out okay in the first few pages, and then switches to the part where you want to scream "figure it out already, and move on", the book finally starts to pick up again at the very end.

What is essentially a new plot and is a tad more intriguing, you start wondering if you're missing a couple hundred pages at the end of the book because there's only a few pages left, and if every anomaly Our Hero has brought forth as a means to finding the killer is given one paragraph to be explained in full, you know it still wouldn't be enough.

And it isn't. All the investigative work done and clues that set murders apart from each other or provide similarities between the victims - all ignored. Nothing. Book Ends.

Either sadly or laughably, the book ends with one of the police telling Our Hero the Private Investigator that the police will have to be investigating this for months to find out why everything went on - and any thoughts of Billy Joe Baddie having co-conspirators or others to carry on the work, not looked at. Could it have been a killing club that Billy Joe Baddie formed with six members, and every year the next member kills someone? We haven't a clue. Nor is there reason to think otherwise - there's no thought given any way whatsoever.

People might say I shouldn't expect to have every book wrapped up neatly with all questions answered because when you leave the reader to continue giving thought to many ideas and the ideas could lead people in different paths, that's what makes 'serious writing'. But books like those are intriguing indeed... Stephen King has quite a few. 'Chasing Darkness' is not that. 'Chasing Darkness' is a writer who has a publisher tell him the deadline's up, so just give me what you have... we'll have someone slap an ending on it.

This was pitiful.

Elvis Has Come Back in the Building
Robert Crais has returned to Elvis Cole in this novel set in the Los Angeles area. Elvis is a private investigator who is draw into working on a suicide in the famous Laurel Canyon area of L.A. CHASING DARKNESS starts in like a Harry Bosch police procedural thriller. Which is okay, because I like Michael Connelly's protagonist almost as much as Elvis and his partner Joe Pike. Harry and Elvis can be seen rubbing shoulders, or at least bumping elbows, in at least one Crais novel.

This one is a little darker than most, and the bad guy, a serial killer of young women, really is evil. The powers that be want Elvis to drop his investigation. Case closed. But Elvis being Elvis can't leave it alone, and resorts to a little B&E, a high speed chase scene through the Hollywood Hills, breaking into the evidence room at Police Headquarters, and he becomes a murder suspect himself.

Elvis teams up with Joe Pike for this one, his running partner fresh from his starring role in THE WATCHMAN, my favorite one yet. Pike is there with the twitch in the corner of his mouth. that being as close to a smile as he can get. And there's chain smoking, tightly wound, Carol Starkey, formerly of the LAPD Bomb Squad, now with Homicide, who can be seen in an earlier Robert Crais novel DEMOLITION ANGEL. The girl, obvious to everyone, except Elvis Cole of course, has a Class A crush on the dude. He just doesn't get it. Or maybe he does, and is just not going for it.

This story kept me guessing until the end, which didn't take long since I couldn't put it down anyway. A true twisty mystery plot solved again by the world's greatest detective, Elvis Cole.