Saturday, March 28, 2009

THE MONKEY'S RAINCOAT

Elvis Cole is a private investigator. On a quiet day, a woman and her friend come to his office. The quiet and very meek woman asks Elvis to look for her husband and her son. It seems that the couple has been having marital problems and the husband may have taken the son away with him. The wife is very reluctant to make any troubles for her husband but her pushy friend thinks that she needs help and she insists that the woman hire Elvis. To Elvis, this looks like a pretty easy little case. He expects that the husband has run off with his new girlfriend and taken his son with him. As he begins investigating, things get more and more complicated. The husband's friends are very strange. His girlfriend is missing, too, and she seems to be involved in some illegal things. The wife, Ellen, refuses to call in the police even when her house is ransacked and it is evident that someone thinks her husband is hiding something very important.

This is the first of Robert Crais' books featuring Elvis Cole and Joe Pike. I didn't find the characters to be much different than in later books in the series. That is a good thing, too, because I love both Elvis and Joe Pike. Maybe later in the series, we get a better look at the feelings that Elvis is reluctant to show, but as always, he is both wisecracking and kind. This book was a great start to this series. I'm just hoping for many more to come. The only mystery left - I'm not sure why the book was called "The Monkey's Raincoat".

Rating - 4.5 stars

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