Chasing Darkness By Robert Crais (Our Father's Review)

I was a late starter reading Robert Crais. He has been writing books since 1987. Before that he wrote for T.V. shows like Hill Street Blues. A little back story: Elvis Cole is a private investigator. His partner's name is Joe Pike. The first book I read by R.C. was The Forgotten Man about 4 years ago. I actually listened to it on audio; I kept pushing the cassettes "remember those" into the car stereo and would drive to my destination slower and slower just to listen to more. After that book, which was very good, I started looking at R.C.'s back list. And the book that all of the critics said was his best was L.A. Requiem. Well I picked it up at a used book store and read it cover to cover in 3 days, which is fast for me. It quickly became one of my top 5 books of all time. OK back to Chasing Darkness. L.A. police find a corpse in a house, during fire season, trying to evacuate houses. The corpse is holding a photo album of murdered young women. From that point Elvis gets involved and there are so many twists and turns that you won't know who the real killer is until the last 20 pages. Crais is a great writer, his dialogue is some of my favorite, his books are relatively short, which I like. Elmore Leonard said once "leave out the parts that readers skip". Well Crais does, but that by no means takes away from his powerful prose. This is a good read and I enjoyed it, not his best, but very good. And the ending is very well done. There is also a scene where Cole visits a dead girl's family that will crack your heart.

Final Thought-Very good book-I love the Elvis Cole series.

Ruling: 8 out of 10

The Brass Verdict (our father's review)

I bought this book on E-Bay (ARC) . For some reason I just Can't wait for the release date of a Connelly book. The main character of the book is Mickey Haller from the Lincoln Lawyer. I don't enjoy Mickey as much as I do Harry Bosch another character Connelly writes about and that also launched his career, but I'll take what I can get. I got excited about this book because the synopsis said Harry and Mickey have to team up to solve a crime. Well Harry wasn't in much of the book but he's in there and that's enough for me. Back in 1993 Connelly wrote The Black Ice (probably my favorite Bosch book in the series. Certainly in my top 3). In that book Connelly wrote that Harry had a half brother that he did'nt know from a father he had only met once,it was only about a half a page well from that seed came the book The Lincoln Lawyer . Oh yeah Mickey is Harrys half brother. They do get together to solve a crime in this book. And during the whole book I was rooting for them to discover that they are half brothers. They do find out at the end of the book.
O.K. Connelly can't write a bad book as far as I am concerned and this one is good. About 3 quarters of the way through there was about 8 or 9 pages where it got bogged down by some courtroom scenes and I was thinking crap I paid $23.00 for this and it looks like Connelly has lost some of his MOJO. However I plowed on (I mean I paid $23.00 and gas is four dollars a gallon) and oh man then it happened the plot twist I usually can figure out how a mystery is going to end and who the bad guys are. But in the Brass Verdict Connelly threw a sucker punch and a twist that I did not see coming. I finished the last 100 pages in one sitting.
FINAL THOUGHT
Connelly has not lost any of his MOJO. And that is why I will be buying his books on E-Bay probably from now on , before the scheduled release date.
Cause I just can't wait for Connelly to sucker punch me again.

Ruling: 9 out of 10

- Jackie