The Monkey's Raincoat - Robert Crais

   1987; 201 pages.  Book 1 (out of 18) in the Elvis Cole Novels series.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Crime Thriller; Hard-Boiled Mystery; Detective Fiction.  Laurels: 1988 Anthony Award - Best Paperback Original (winner); 1988 Mystery Readers International Macavity Award - Best First Novel (winner); 1988 Edgar Award – Best Paperback Original (nominee); 1988 Shamus Award – Best Original P.I. Paperback (nominee).  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

    To Elvis Cole, the case seems like easy money.  Ellen Lang’s husband Mort and 9-year-old son Perry have gone missing, and she’ll pay Elvis handsomely to find them and bring them back.

    Of course the fact that both disappeared at the same time kinda points at a father who stole his kid as part of some ploy in a custody battle.  Ellen swears this isn’t the case, but her friend, Janet Simon, isn’t so sure.  In her eyes, Mort’s a royal bum.

    Of course the fact that Mort has a girlfriend bolsters Janet’s view of the matter.  Mort runs a talent agency in the Hollywood area, and one of his clients, an actress/bombshell by the name of Kimberly Marsh, is his extramarital love interest.  The most plausible explanation for Mort’s disappearance would be him deciding to shack up with Kimberly for a while.

   But then why grab Perry?

What’s To Like...

    The Monkey’s Raincoat is the initial novel in what is now an 18-book hard-boiled detective series featuring Elvis Cole and his partner Joe Pike.  Elvis takes care of the brainy matters and Joe takes care of the rough stuff.  I read Book 2 in this series, Stalking The Angel, a little while back; it is reviewed here.

    Both books have a similar tone – dark and gritty scenes that are nicely balanced by witty and at times heartwarming parts.  If you enjoyed the Bruce Willis/Cybill Shepherd TV series Moonlighting, you’ll love Elvis Cole books.

    The Monkey’s Raincoat is a short book, only 201 pages long, and a fast-&-easy read.  It takes a few pages to get going, but that’s to be expected in any Book One of a series, since the author has to introduce the setting (the greater Los Angeles area) and the recurring characters.  Once that’s taken care of here, the pacing picks up nicely.  There are 39 chapters to cover the 201 pages, which means you’ll have no trouble finding a convenient place to stop for the night.  The book is written in the first-person POV, Elvis’s.

    The storyline is straightforward: find Mort and Perry, and later on, find several additional people who go missing.  It should come as no surprise that the case rapidly gets more complicated, and that Elvis quickly finds himself in harm's way.  

    I liked that Robert Crais gives nods to other writers in related genres, including Stephen King, Tony Hillerman, and Elmore Leonard.  I’ve read books by the first two; but not the last one, so I may have to find some of Leonard's novels the next time I hit the used-book stores.  It was fun to relive life in 1987, the year the book was published.  Some of the now-defunct items in the book were: 7-Eleven stores, Minolta cameras, typewriters, Virginia Slims, landlines with long phone cords, lots of musical references to what are now "classic rock" bands, and a Washington NBA team that was still called "the Bullets".

    The ending is full of action with a couple of neat twists to keep things interesting.  It’s a bit predictable and over-the-top (Rambo would fit in nicely), but who cares?  The thrills and spills were nonstop, and that’s why we read this genre.  The last chapter serves as the book’s epilogue, and has a couple twists of its own.  Ellen is a changed woman by the story’s end, and I think that is the main motif beyond the action-thriller-mystery aspect.

Kewlest New Word ...

Soffit (n.) : the underside of an architectural structure such as an arch, a balcony, or overhanging eaves.

Excerpts...

    I produced the PI license and the license to carry, and watched him read them.  “Elvis.  This is some kind of bullshit or what?”

    “After my mother.”

    He looked at me the way cops look at you when they’re thinking about trying you out, then gave me the benefit of the doubt.  “Guess you take some riding about that.”

    “My brother Edna had it worse.”  (pg. 26)

    The woman in the silver lamé housecoat came out into the street and stared at me with her hands on her hips, then pointed at a little sign planted in the ivy by her drive.  Every house on the street had one, a little red sign that said Bel Air Patrol – Armed Response.  I stuck my tongue out at her and crossed my eyes.  She gave me the finger and went back into her compound.  Another close brush with dangerous, affluent-class life-forms.  (pg. 133)

Winter downpour – even the monkey needs a raincoat (Basho).  (pg. 0 )

    The quibble are minor.  There’s a bunch of cussing, along with sex and drugs and rock-&-roll.  If you only read cozy mysteries, you should probably give The Monkey’s Raincoat a pass.  A plot thread or two were left open at the end – such as what happened to the drugs, which surface (literally) near the end of the story – but I suppose it is reasonable to assume the dope ended up in police custody.

    Finally, and most “quibbly” – the book’s title has no discernible tie-in to the story, other than it’s raining when the action-packed climax occurs.  It’s the English translation of an excerpt of a piece of Japanese haiku by a poet named Matsuo Basho.  In fairness, the title of Book Two, Stalking The Angel, also has nothing to do with the story.  Maybe this is true of all eighteen titles in the series.

    8 Stars.  For your (and my) enlightenment, Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) is one of the most famous Japanese haiku composers of the “Edo Period” in Japan.  You can read the Wikipedia article about him here, which includes English translations of some of his memorable poems.  I’m not a big reader of haiku, but I liked these excerpts enough that it might motivate me to go find some books of Basho’s poetry.