L.A. Requiem

By Robert Crais
Published by Ballantine Books

Elvis Cole is your average Los Angeles private dick...and yet he's so much more. He's trendy yet arcane, doesn't know when to shut his mouth and will make you laugh until you cry. His humor self-depreciates through a false sense of ego. He likes Disney movies and has a mean cat.

He's one of the protagonists of L.A. Requiem, the latest novel by Robert Crais in his Elvis Cole series of novels. He's the best reason to pick up the book--the sections told by him in the first-person are huge highlights. But any mystery novel is only as good as its whodunit, and Requiem delivers on that score as well. It's a nice mix of police procedure and classic gumshoeing that keeps the question marks floating until the last possible moment, then doesn't flinch in allowing the conclusion to explode and leave scars.

The action is told through several points of view--Cole's first-person narration carries much of the novel, and there are a series of flashbacks that fill in blanks from his partner's past, the stoic and powerful Joe Pike. You even enter the mind of the killer at several key points in the story.

The killer is...well, that would be telling, wouldn't it? The killer has killed Karen Garcia, a former girlfriend of Pike's, and Karen's father enlists Pike and Elvis to watch the police as they investigate Karen's murder. It's not as simple as fingering a killer and tracking him down, though. Karen's death is entangled in elements of Pike's past, in ugly corruption that reaches throughout the Los Angeles Police Department, and in the vicious acts of a serial killer bent on revenge. Watching these pieces fall together is half of the fun about Requiem.

The other half is Elvis Cole. Crais writes Elvis with such confidence and wit that it's impossible not to be drawn in by his narration. He's one of the most entertaining lead characters in a detective novel that you'll find, and not because he's fully in command of every situation, but because he's not. As the story progresses, Elvis' personal life disintegrates at the same rate that he's discovering new bits of evidence on the Garcia case, and watching Elvis deal with each new complication in his life makes for great reading, especially since his sense of humor never fades.

L.A. Requiem is currently available in paperback, and you can probably find it in supermarkets, airports and gas stations everywhere. It's perfect paperback reading, engaging enough to keep you involved and relaxed enough to be fun. If you're piling books aside for your beach blanket library this summer, be sure to include Requiem in the stack. It's great entertainment and a damn gripping yarn to boot.