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Robert Crais was born on 20th June 1953 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, United States. He is the author of the best-selling Elvis Cole series. A native of Louisiana, Robert Crais grew up in one blue collar family of police officers and oil refinery workers. He was trained as a mechanical engineer before he pursued his dream of becoming an author. After years of writing short fiction and amateur film-making, he journeyed to Hollywood back in 1976, where he found work writing scripts for major network television series such as Hill Street Blues, Quincy, Miami Vice, Cagney and Lacey and L.A. Law.
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Order of Elvis Cole & Joe Pike Series
# | Read | Title | Published | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | The Monkey's Raincoat | 1987 | Description / Buy | |
2 | Stalking the Angel | 1989 | Description / Buy | |
3 | Lullaby Town | 1992 | Description / Buy | |
4 | Free Fall | 1993 | Description / Buy | |
5 | Voodoo River | 1995 | Description / Buy | |
6 | Sunset Express | 1996 | Description / Buy | |
7 | Indigo Slam | 1997 | Description / Buy | |
8 | L. A. Requiem | 1999 | Description / Buy | |
9 | The Last Detective | 2003 | Description / Buy | |
10 | The Forgotten Man | 2005 | Description / Buy | |
11 | The Watchman | 2007 | Description / Buy | |
12 | Chasing Darkness | 2008 | Description / Buy | |
13 | The First Rule | 2010 | Description / Buy | |
14 | The Sentry | 2011 | Description / Buy | |
15 | Taken | 2012 | Description / Buy | |
16 | The Promise | 2015 | Description / Buy | |
17 | The Wanted | 2017 | Description / Buy | |
18 | A Dangerous Man | 2019 | Description / Buy | |
19 | Racing the Light | 2022 | Description / Buy | |
20 | The BIg Empty | 2025 | Description / Buy |
Order of Scott James & Maggie Series
# | Read | Title | Published | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Suspect | 2013 | Description / Buy | |
2 | The Promise | 2015 | Description / Buy |
Order of Robert Crais Standalone Novels
# | Read | Title | Published | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Demolition Angel | 2000 | Description / Buy | |
2 | Hostage | 2001 | Description / Buy | |
3 | The Two Minute Rule | 2006 | Description / Buy |
Order of Robert Crais Short Stories/Novellas
# | Read | Title | Published | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | The Man Who Knew Dick Bong (Short Story) | 2011 | Description / Buy |
Order of Mysterious Profiles Series
# | Read | Title | Published | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Elvis Cole and Joe Pike | 2022 | Description / Buy | |
2 | Jack Taylor | 2022 | Description / Buy | |
3 | Jack Reacher | 2022 | Description / Buy | |
4 | Charlie Parker | 2022 | Description / Buy | |
5 | Hieronymus Bosch | 2022 | Description / Buy | |
6 | Lincoln Rhyme | 2022 | Description / Buy | |
7 | Alex Delaware | 2022 | Description / Buy | |
8 | Tess Monaghan | 2022 | Description / Buy | |
9 | Charlie Resnick | 2022 | Description / Buy | |
10 | Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus | 2022 | Description / Buy | |
11 | Inspector Morse | 2022 | Description / Buy | |
12 | Dismas Hardy | 2022 | Description / Buy | |
13 | Bob Lee Swagger | 2022 | Description / Buy | |
14 | Aloysius X. L. Pendergast | 2022 | Description / Buy | |
15 | Lou Boldt (Short Story) | 2022 | Description / Buy | |
16 | Spenser | 2022 | Description / Buy | |
17 | Charlotte and Thomas Pitt | 2022 | Description / Buy | |
18 | John Rebus | 2022 | Description / Buy | |
19 | Mallory | 2022 | Description / Buy | |
20 | Jane Whitefield (Short Story) | 2022 | Description / Buy | |
21 | Ian Rutledge: A Mysterious Profile (Short Story) | 2022 | Description / Buy | |
22 | Amos Walker (Short Story) | 2022 | Description / Buy | |
23 | Precious Ramotswe (Short Story) | 2022 | Description / Buy | |
24 | Maisie Dobbs (Short Story) | 2022 | Description / Buy | |
25 | The Lincoln Lawyer (Short Story) | 2022 | Description / Buy | |
26 | Ben Kincaid (Short Story) | 2023 | Description / Buy | |
27 | Repairman Jack (Short Story) | 2023 | Description / Buy | |
28 | Peter Diamond (Short Story) | 2024 | Description / Buy | |
29 | Nathan Heller (Short Story) | 2024 | Description / Buy |
Robert Crais Anthologies
# | Read | Title | Published | Details |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe | 2011 | Description / Buy | |
2 | The Best American Mystery Stories 2012 | 2012 | Description / Buy | |
3 | Crimespree Magazine #61 | 2015 | Description / Buy |
ROBERT CRAIS AWARDS
An award winning novelist, Robert’s books have made into the New York Times best seller lists. He is also the 2006 recipient of Ross MacDonald Literary Award. In addition, he has authored several New York Times best sellers.
He also received an Emmy nomination for his works on Hill Street Blues. Besides all these, Robert Crais is most proud of his four-hour NBC miniseries, The Cross of Fire, which was declared by The New York Times declared as “A powerful and searing documentation of the Ku Klux Klan’s rise to national prominence back in the 1920s.”
ROBERT CRAIS BOOKS INTO MOVIES
Crais’ debut in the fiction world was The Monkey’s Raincoat back in 1987 –the first novel of the Elvis Cole series. Apart from the Cole and Pike series, Crais has also written several standalone novels. One of these novels, Hostage, was adapted into a Bruce Willis movie of the same name. One of the rare cases where the movie may just be better than the book.
BEST ROBERT CRAIS BOOKS
The Elvis Cole Series is one of the best series that Robert Crais has written. Below are the top 3 books in this series.
Indigo Slam: This is the seventh book in this series. It is an action packed and razor sharp thriller that features Elvis Cole, LA private eye. Meet Elvis Cole, a Vietnam Veteran, private eye who always carries a .38 and is very much determined never to grow up. Fifteen year old Teri Hewitt has been left to hold the babies now that Clark , her dad, has disappeared without trace. Teri Hewitt wants Cole to find her dad. The search then reveals an unemployed drug addict who’s caught up in several counterfeiting scams and mixed up with the Vietnamese Gunmen and Russian mafia. As the novel’s action heads towards a gunfight at Disneyland and Elvis Cole dodges his girlfriend’s husband , Indigo Slam shapes up into the most exciting and entertaining American crime novel for several years.
The Last Detective: Elvis Cole is again coming to terms with his whole life as a PI on L.A streets. He loves Lucy Chenier, his girlfriend, but his constant exposure to Californian underclasses has stretched further their relationship to the limit more so when Cole’s job brings danger close to her much-loved son. Ben, the young boy, is quickly becoming the light in their lives. Then on one sunny afternoon, the demons from Cole’s past finally come to visit. The young boy is snatched from his secluded home by kidnappers. The kidnappers call but they do not want money. The only thing that they want is retribution. However, who from his past is able to do such type of crime? The only clue is that kidnapper mentions the words ‘five two’. Five two used to be his unit designation when in Vietnam. This is a life that he has avoided to think about for over 20 years. However, he now has to embark on a journey into his past to try to protect his own future. This is because it seems that this kidnapper is not just someone who knows him well but he’s also someone who owes him.
The Watchman: In Robert Crais’ novel, The Watchman, we have this author firing on all cylinders and all Crais aficionados shall know that’s an experience to savor. It is one of the tough long-term Robert Crais protagonists, Joe Pikes, who sets this edgy narrative in motion. The narrative barely pauses for breath once this Crais’ high adrenaline novel gets in motion. Joe Pike has been requested to look after a young female witness in a case that involves an extremely dangerous gangster. Larkin Conner Barkely, the witness, could not be more different from the silent Joe: she is rich, willful and much used to getting her own ways. The uneasy alliance between these two is not helped a lot when some violent men start to breath down their necks. Joe Pike realizes that he will have to drag the reluctant Larkin from her privileged background and then hide her from view in down-market areas of Los Angeles, while at the same time still bloodily taking the battle to the enemies.
When Does The Next Robert Crais book come out?
The next book by Robert Crais is The BIg Empty and will be released on January, 14th 2025. It is the newest book in the Elvis Cole & Joe Pike Series.