Book 1

The Monkey's Raincoat

by Robert Crais

Published 1 July 1987
When Los Angeles private detective Elvis Cole investigates the disappearance of Ellen Lang's husband and young son, he stumbles into a bizarre nightmare of high-level intrigue, missing drugs, and murder in Hollywood's seamy underworld.

Book 2

Stalking The Angel

by Robert Crais

Published 1 September 1989
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 sidekick Joe Pike did. Together, Cole and Pike begin their search in LA's Little Tokyo, the nest of the notorious Japanese mafia, the Yakuza - and find themselves caught up in a white-knuckled adventure filled with madness, murder and sexual obsession. Just another day's work for Elvis Cole...

Book 3

Lullaby Town

by Robert Crais

Published 1 March 1992
Reissue of the third Elvis Cole novel from the bestselling author of THE WATCHMAN. Peter Alan Nelsen is a super-successful movie director who is used to getting what he wants. And what he wants now 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 psycho killer who is the son of the godfather. And when the unpredictable Nelsen charges in, an explosive situation blows sky-high.

Book 4

Free Fall

by Robert Crais

Published 1 May 1993
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.

Book 6

Sunset Express

by Robert Crais

Published 1 April 1996
On his own turf in LA, PI Elvis Cole is embroiled in a controversial, high-profile murder case. A wealthy restaurateur is accused of murdering his wife, and his hot-shot defence lawyer hires Cole to find proof that the detective on the case, Angela Rossi, fooled around with the evidence. Yet as Elvis investigates Rossi for the defence team, he begins to be more suspicious of the media-loving lawyers than the cops. And as the investigation continues, Cole is drawn deeper and deeper into the intrigue and dangers surrounding the case of the missing woman.

Book 7

Indigo Slam

by Robert Crais

Published 1 April 1997
Fifteen-year-old Teri Hewitt has been left holding the babies since her dad, Clark, disappeared without trace. She wants LA private eye Elvis Cole to find him, and although he knows he should refuse and hand it over to social services, he finds himself taking on the case. 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 ex-husband, he realises Teri is one whole lot of trouble he should have left to the professionals.

Book 9

The Last Detective

by Robert Crais

Published 1 January 2003
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. Now Elvis 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.

Book 10

The Forgotten Man

by Robert Crais

Published 1 January 2005
Six months after nearly losing everything to the men who kidnapped his girlfriend's ten-year-old son, Elvis Cole is slowly coming back to life - when he receives an ominous phone call from the LAPD. An unidentified body has been found in a seedy Los Angeles motel room and Elvis is called to the scene. Finally, Elvis is told that before the man died, he said he was Elvis's father. Cole turns to the one person who can help him navigate the minefield of his past - his longtime partner, Joe Pike. As the two men launch into an investigation into the dead man's background, Elvis struggles with wanting to believe he's found his father at last - and allowing his suspicions to hold him back. With each clue they uncover, a troubling picture emerges about the man who may have been Elvis's father. As Elvis and Joe approach the true identity of the dead man, they unwittingly walk straight into a hornet's nest.

Book 11

The Watchman

by Robert Crais

Published 27 February 2007
After his acclaimed stand-alone bestseller, THE TWO MINUTE RULE, Robert Crais returns with the eagerly awaited new Elvis Cole and Joe Pike novel. For Elvis and Joe, two of the most beloved characters in crime fiction, the action is getting a little close to home. The dangerous and enigmatic Joe Pike has always defied close examination, but in this breathtaking new thriller, that's all about to change...Joe Pike owes a bad man a big favour. And the favor is to protect the life of Larkin Conner Barkley, a spoiled rich girl who happens to be a federal witness in a case against the mob. When Pike and the girl come under intense fire, he hatches a plan: disappear into the anonymous underbelly of Los Angeles, turn the table, and hunt down the hunters. Enlisting the help of Elvis Cole, Pike uncovers a web of lies and betrayals; even the cops aren't who they seem. But as the body count rises, it becomes clear that Pike's biggest threat may be the girl herself - a vapid soul determined to destroy herself, unless Joe can fill the void in her bruised heart.

Book 13

The First Rule

by Robert Crais

Published 22 December 2009
The team thought that Frank Meyer had got out of the 'life' safely. He had put an end to his mercenary days, turned over a new leaf and settled down with his wife and children. It had been a hard decision but, encouraged by his boss and friend Joe Pike, he had walked away. But ten years later, a group of armed men break into his Los Angeles home and brutally gun him and his family down. It's a vicious, cold and professional job. The crew leave no trace behind except the bodies. But they have made one catastrophic, and almost certainly terminal, mistake - Joe Pike. Because Pike is now determined to hunt down and eliminate everyone involved in the attack one by one. And it doesn't matter that, as he starts to investigate, he discovers that this group of criminals are bigger and more well-organised than he ever could have imagined - part of sprawling gang of east European mafia. None of that matters, they are going down anyway.

Book 14

The Sentry

by Robert Crais

Published 1 January 2011
Dru Rayne and her uncle are Louisiana refugees who relocated to Los Angeles after Hurricane Katrina. Now, five years after the storm, their struggling restaurant faces a different danger. When Joe Pike witnesses Dru's uncle beaten by a neighbourhood gang intent on extorting protection money, he offers his own brand of protection. But neither Dru nor her uncle want his help - and neither do the federal agents mysteriously watching their store -- agents who seem more than willing to let the gang have their way. But Pike is falling for Dru, and won't back away whether she wants his help or not. As the violence escalates, the gang targets Pike, who, with Elvis Cole's help, learns that Dru and her uncle are not who they seem. It soon emerges that everything Pike thought he knew about them, their relationship to the gang, and the reasons they fled New Orleans have been lies. Now, a vengeful and murderous force from their past is catching up with them, pitting Pike and Cole against the combined forces of South American crime lords, rogue federal agents, and contract assassins on the bloody hunt for twelve million dollars in missing stolen cash.

Book 15

Taken

by Robert Crais

Published 1 January 2012
When the police tell a wealthy industrialist that her missing son has faked his own kidnapping, she hires Elvis Cole and Joe Pike-and Cole soon determines that it was no fake. The boy and his secret girlfriend have been taken, and are now lost in the gray and changing world of the professional border kidnappers who prey not only on innocent victims but also on one another-buying, selling, and stealing victims like commodities. Fortunately, the kidnappers don't yet know who the boy is, but when Cole goes undercover to try to buy the two hostages back, he himself is taken and disappears. Now it is up to Pike to retrace Cole's steps, burning through the hard and murderous world of human traffickers ... before it is too late.

Book 16

The Promise

by Robert Crais

Published 4 November 2015
When Elvis Cole is hired to locate a woman who may have disappeared with a stranger she met online, it seems like an ordinary case -- until Elvis learns the missing woman worked for a defense contractor and was being blackmailed to supply explosives components for a person or persons unknown. Meanwhile, LAPD officer Scott James and his patrol dog, Maggie, enter an abandoned building to locate an armed and dangerous thief, only to discover far more than they expected: The fugitive is dead, the building is filled with explosives, and Scott and Maggie are assaulted by a hidden man who escapes in the chaos, all as a bloodied Joe Pike watches from the shadows. Soon, Scott and Maggie find themselves targeted by that man, and, as their case intertwines with Elvis and Joe's, joining forces to follow the trail of the missing woman as well. From inner-city drug traffickers to a shadowy group of Afghan war veterans with ties to a terrorist cell, the people they encounter on that trail add up to ever-increasing odds, and soon the four of them are fighting to find the woman not only before she is killed but before the same fate happens to one of them.

Voodoo River

by Robert Crais

Published 2 June 1995
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 ...

L.A. Requiem

by Robert Crais

Published 1 June 1999
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 ...

Chasing Darkness

by Robert Crais

Published 1 July 2008
It is fire season, and the hills of Los Angeles are burning. Fire Department personnel rush to evacuate the inhabitants, and find the days-old corpse of a middle-aged recluse who apparently committed suicide. Clutched in his lap is a photo album containing photographs of seven young women who have been murdered, each photograph was taken only moments after the women were killed. One murder per year for seven years, their bodies found in different parts of the city. LAPD homicide detectives had never connected the seven murders. But now with the discovery of the "death album" these seven murders have been linked, and the news for Elvis Cole is bad...Only one suspect had been charged in any of those cases, that being for the murder of victim #4. LAPD and the LA County District Attorney had a recorded confession by the suspect and believed him to be the murderer. But, with evidence supplied by Elvis Cole, in the end he walked free. That suspect was the suicide now discovered in the fire, Elliot Martin. Did Cole's action three years ago free a killer to commit more murders? Did Elvis cost three young women their lives?

Devil's Cantina

by Robert Crais

Published 1 February 1999

Robert Crais

by Robert Crais

Published 1 May 2002