Saturday, January 30, 2010

Book Review: "The First Rule" by Robert Crais



It takes a good author to create characters you remember. It takes a great author to get you to care about the characters enough to get invested in them time and again. Robert Crais is one of those great authors, and he has created two such characters—sarcastic private investigator Elvis Cole and his silent-but-deadly longtime friend and business partner, Joe Pike. While The First Rule focuses more on Pike, Elvis does show up to assist.

On a fairly typical night in suburban LA, importer Frank Meyer and his entire family are brutally murdered in what appears to be a robbery-motivated home invasion. But Meyer wasn't just a regular guy: he used to be a contract mercenary with Joe Pike before he left to start a family. Pike is determined to track down Frank's murderers at any cost, and runs into the police, ATF and the world of Serbian organized crime while doing so. This book has some great action and some terrific character development, and Crais has done a great job in his last several books rounding out Pike's persona more fully. While some of the action may be a little predictable, this book is a great page-turner. And you can't go wrong picking up any other of Crais' books either.

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