Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Chasing Darkness -- Robert Crais

Elvis Cole is back, and he's almost his old wise-cracking self, in spite of the novel's title. Not that there's not considerable darkness here, but there's some light shining through the cracks.

A man is found dead, an apparent suicide, with a book of photos on the floor beside him. The photos pretty seem to prove that the guy's a serial killer. The problem? In the case of one of the dead women, Cole provided the evidence that allowed the guy to escape prosecution.

You've read enough crime fiction to know why there are qualifiers in the sentences above. Things aren't what they appear to be, and Cole is determined to find the answers, even more so when it appears (there's that qualifier again) that the cops are engaged in a massive cover-up.

If you've read Crais before, you know what to expect. The writing's sharp, the observations are on target, the dialog is snappy. I thought the ending was a bit extended, and I'm never happy with the "well, we'll just never know all the answers" kind of conclusion, especially when one of the answers is a pretty big deal. But the book gets high marks anyway.

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