1989; 276 pages. New Author? : Yes. Book #2 (out
of 17) in the “Elvis Cole” series.
Genre : Crime Thriller; Hard-Boiled Mystery; Psychological Thriller. Overall Rating : 8½*/10.
Someone
has stolen Bradley Warren’s copy of “Recorded Words of the Hagakure Master”, a
book about “Bushido”, the code of conduct for samurai warriors who didn’t know
how to act when there wasn’t a war going on. (Really. Wiki it.) Bradley’s copy is an early printing of the
book, which means it is worth quite a bit of money.
Bradley wants the best private investigator on the case, and that happens
to be our protagonist, Elvis Cole. The
relationship between the two is immediately and inherently strained; Bradley
likes to boss his underlings around (after all, he is paying Elvis good money to recover the
book), and Elvis is not the type of guy to take crap from anyone,
and in any case does not view himself as one of Bradley’s employees.
The book is Bradley’s most prized possession, and Bradley has a lot of
possessions. He also has a wife and
teenage daughter. When the thief-or-thieves
threaten his family to stop him from attempting to recover the Hagakure, it forces
Bradley to reevaluate what’s most important in his life. After a surprisingly short amount of time, he
comes to a startling conclusion.
Yep,
it’s still the Hagakure.
What’s To Like...
Stalking The Angel, the second book in Robert
Crais’s Elvis Cole series, is a
fast-paced sleuth story with both lighthearted banter and a dark tone. Our protagonist, Elvis Cole, reminds me of
Bruce Willis’s character in the old TV series, Moonlighting. He‘s keen of wit, has great tastes in cars (he drives a
yellow 1966 corvette), is charming with the dames, and is reasonably rough-&-tough. And if the bad guys happen to be even tougher
than him, he can always send in his rougher-and-tougher partner, Joe Pike.
I
like the setting – the greater Los Angeles area in the 1980’s. I lived there for three summers in the
1970’s, and the descriptions of the parts of town that Elvis visits in his
investigation brought back old memories.
The Tower Records store there was an iconic landmark; so were the Denny’s coffee
shops and Bob’s Big Boy
restaurants. I’m not as familiar with
the Chinatown and the Japanese sections, so those were fun to get acquainted
with. I think it’s safe to say that Los
Angeles is Robert Crais’s old stomping grounds.
Other
bits of pleasant nostalgia were the nods to Disney characters (such as the
book’s cover), the Adventures
of Rocky and Bullwinkle, Life
magazine, and Salem Lights (are those still
around?). The literary
references were neat – Robert Heinlein’s Stranger
in a Strange Land, and the pithy “Who
watches the Watchmen?” adage.
The snarky digs at Donald Trump
seem eerily prophetic, and I enjoyed the Japanese culture tie-ins, such as the
martial arts topics of Bushido, Yakuza
and the Hagakure, plus the artistic wood block prints, which I recently read
about in the book Paper, reviewed here.
Stalking The Angel has lots of cussing
in it, which I thought fit the ambiance quite well. The story is told in the first-person POV
(Elvis’s), and the 37 chapters cover 276 pages in the Kindle version.
The ending contains several twists, which is always a plus in a mystery novel. One major plot thread is
left unresolved, but I think that was deliberate and it works well here. I never did figure out the reason for the
book’s title. Stalking The Angel is a
standalone novel, as well as part of a series.
Kewlest New Word . . .
Priest (n.)
: Apparently slang for a nightstick, although I couldn’t confirm this, even after googling
it.
Excerpts...
Downtown Los
Angeles does not feel like Los Angeles.
It is Boston or Chicago or Detroit or Manhattan. It feels like someplace else that had come
out to visit and decided to stay. Maybe
one day they’ll put a dome over it and charge admission. They could call it Banal-land. (loc. 386)
She then reminded
me that today was the Pacific Men’s Club Man of the Month banquet. The banquet was to begin at one, we were
expected to arrive at the hotel by noon, and would I please dress appropriate
to the occasion? I told her that my
formal black suede holster was being cleaned, but that I would do the best I
could. She asked me why I always had
something flip to say, I said that I didn’t know, but having been blessed with
the gift, I felt obliged to use it. (loc. 1039)
Kindle Details...
Stalking
the Angel sells for $7.99 right now at Amazon. The rest of the books in the series sell for $6.99
to $9.99. Elvis’s sidekick, Joe Pike, has his own
series, and those books are all $9.99. Robert Crais also has a couple standalone
novels; they go for anywhere from $7.99 to $9.99.
Not thinking, properly done, creates a pleasant numbed sensation in
the brain that I like a lot. There are
women who will tell you that not thinking is one of my best things. (loc. 1946)
There are a couple of nits to pick. A couple
of the characters pop into the story without any background info. Charlie Griggs is one of them. This left me confused for a bit, but perhaps
they were introduced to the reader in the first book in the series.
There are some inherent advantages to reading the books in a series in order.
Also, most of the characters seemed black or white to me, and in general,
I find that gray characters are more interesting.
In a similar vein, anyone in the book who doesn’t get along with Elvis is a good
candidate for not failing to make it to the end of the book.
But I quibble. I kinda get the feeling that Stalking The Angel was written in “pulp fiction” style, and as such
character depth takes a backseat to an interesting plotline. The bottom line is, I found the book to be thoroughly entertaining.
8½ Stars. According to the Wikipedia article on Robert
Crais, Stalking The Angel is the only one of
the first 15 books in the series that didn’t get nominated for and/or win a
literary award. This means any other Elvis Cole novels that I read should be even more of a treat, and I have several of them on my Kindle and TBR shelf.
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