When quiet Ellen Lang enters Elvis Cole's Disney Deco office, she's lost something very valuable her husband and her young son. The case seems simple enough, but Elvis isn't thrilled. Neither is his enigmatic partner and firepower Joe Pike. Their search down the seamy side of Hollywood 's studio lots and sculptured lawns soon leads them deep into a nasty netherworld of drugs and sex and murder. Now the case is getting interesting, but it's also turned ugly. Because everybody, from cops to starlets to crooks, has declared war on Ellen and Elvis

Bradley Warren had lost something very valuable, something that belonged to someone else: a rare thirteenth century Japanese manuscript called the Hagakure. Everything PI Elvis Cole knew about Japanese culture he'd learned from reading Shogun, but he knew a lot of crooks and what he didn't know, his sociopathic sidekick Joe Pike did. Together their search begins in LA's Little Tokyo and the nest of the notorious Japanese mafia, the yakuza, and leads to a white knuckled adventure filled with madness, murder and sexual obsession just another day's work for Elvis Cole

Peter Alan Nelsen is a super successful movie director who is used to getting what he wants. And what he wants is to find the wife and infant child he dumped on the road to fame. It's the kind of case that Cole could handle in his sleep, except that when Cole actually finds Nelsen's ex wife, everything takes on nightmarish proportions a nightmare which involves Cole with a nasty New York mob family and a psychokiller who is the son of the godfather. When the unpredictable Nelsen charges in, an explosive situation blows sky high

Elvis Cole is just a detective who can't say no, especially to a girl in a terrible fix. And Jennifer Sheridan qualifies. Her fiance, Mark Thurman, is a decorated LA cop with an elite plainclothes unit, but Jennifer is sure he's in trouble the kind of serious trouble that only Cole can get him out of. Five minutes after his new client leaves the office, Cole and his partner, the enigmatic Joe Pike, are hip deep in a deadly situation as they plummet into a world of South Central gangs, corrupt cops and conspiracies of silence. And before long, every cop in the LAPD is gunning for a pair of armed and dangerous killers Cole and Pike

Hired to uncover the past of Jodi Taylor, an actress in a hit TV show, Elvis leaves his native Los Angeles to head for Louisiana in search of Jodi's biological parents. But before he can tackle the mystery of the actress's background, he is up against a whole host of eccentrics, including a crazed Raid spraying housewife, a Cajun thug who looks like he's been made out of spare parts, and a menacing hundred year old river turtle named Luther. As Elvis learns about the enigmatic actress's origins, he also discovers the real reason he's been sent to Louisiana…

When a wealthy L.A. restaurateur is accused of murdering his wife, his attorney hires Elvis Cole to find proof that police detective Angela Rossi fooled around with the evidence. As Elvis investigates, he becomes more suspicious of the lawyers than the cops

An action packed, razor sharp thriller featuring LA private eye Elvis Cole. Meet Elvis Cole. Vietnam Veteran, private eye who carries a.38 and is determined never to grow up. 15 year old Teri Hewitt has been left holding the babies now that her dad, Clark has disappeared without trace. She wants Cole to find him. The search reveals a chronically unemployed drug addict caught up in counterfeiting scams and mixed up with the Russian mafia and Vietnamese Gunmen. As the action heads towards a gunfight in Disneyland and Cole dodges his almost girlfriend's husband, Indigo Slam shapes up into the most entertaining and exciting American crime novel for years

A reckoning has come to the City of Angels… Karen Garcia is missing and her father doesn't trust the cops he wants someone he knows on the case so he enlists the help of Elvis Cole and Joe Pike. It seems that Karen is the latest victim of a distinctive serial killer and the police are determined to pin her death, and four others, on the witness who found her body. Cole doesn't believe the man has the guts to murder, and with his partner and the police at each other's throats, it's down to him to find the connection that will reveal the killer. But nailing the murderer means choosing between the two people he cares most about…

Elvis Cole is once again coming to terms with his life as a PI on the streets of LA. He loves his girlfriend, Lucy Chenier, but his constant exposure to the Californian underclasses has stretched their relationship to the limit especially when Cole's job brings danger too close to her beloved son. The young boy, Ben, is rapidly becoming the light in both their lives. Then one sunny afternoon, the demons from Elvis's past finally come to visit. Ben is snatched from Cole's secluded home. The kidnappers call. They don't want money. They only want retribution. But who from his past is capable of such a crime? The only clue is that the kidnappers mention the words 'five two'. Five two was his unit designation in Vietnam a life he has avoided thinking about for over twenty years. But now he must embark on a journey into his own past to try to protect his future. For it seems that this kidnapper is not only someone who knows him, but someone who owes him

Crais's latest L.A.-based crime novel featuring super-sleuth Elvis Cole blends high-powered action, a commanding cast and a touch of dark humor to excellent dramatic effect. One morning at four, Cole gets a call from the LAPD informing him that a murdered John Doe has claimed, with his dying breath, to be Cole's father, a man Cole has never met. Cole immediately gets to work gathering evidence on the dead man – Herbert Faustina, aka George Reinnike – while cramping the style of the assigned detective, Jeff Pardy. Though Cole finds Reinnike's motel room key at the crime scene, the puzzle pieces are tough to put together, even with the unfailing help of partner Joe Pike and feisty ex-Bomb Squad techie Carol Starkey, who's so smitten with Cole that she can't think of him without smiling. Days of smart sleuthing work take the self-proclaimed "World's Greatest Detective" from a Venice Beach escort service to the California desert, then a hospital in San Diego, where doubts about Reinnike's true heritage begin to dissipate. Meanwhile, a delusional psychopath named Frederick Conrad, who is convinced that his partner in crime was killed by Cole, stalks and schemes to even the score. There's lots to digest, but this character-driven series continues to be strong in plot, action and pacing, and Crais (The Last Detective) boasts a distinctive knack for a sucker-punch element of surprise

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