Tue 15 Feb 2011
ROBERT CRAIS – The First Rule. Putnam’s, hardcover, January 2010. Berkley, premium paperback, January 2011.
Joe Pike has been appearing in Robert Crais’s Elvis Cole books as his good call-upon-when-needed right hand man for quite some time, but this is only the second in which he has had the starring role, the first being The Watchman (2007). Cole appears in this one too, but he’s called upon only when Pike needs some good old-fashioned PI assistance (and for someone to cover his back).
I’ve just finished the paperback edition, all 393 pages worth, and in spite of all the blurbs inside the front cover, each more positive than the next, I don’t think that Pike, the strong taciturn type, has it in him to be the star of a book with that many pages in it. Believe it or not, this is a thriller than gets less and less thrilling as the book goes on.
It all begins when a gang of hoodlums hired by some good old-fashioned Serbian criminals guns down an old mercenary buddy of Pike, along with his entire family and a young nanny for the kids. Pike doesn’t take this well.
And he spends the next 370 pages or so proving it. I think that what the problem is here is that when your primary hero is Superman, who can destroy entire galaxies just by listening hard – I’m paraphrasing here, and I don’t know who it was who came up with the original quote – how do you make his adventures interesting?
February 16th, 2011 at 12:05 am
The “will the hero survive” form of jeopardy is one of the lamest ways for a writer of series fiction to create suspense.
I like Crais’ Elvis Cole and have “Watchman” in my waiting to be read line. But he is too “bestseller mainstream” for me. Nice read but nothing to get excited about.
February 16th, 2011 at 1:50 am
The question in FIRST RULE is not so much whether the hero will survive as much as it is, will he succeed?
Will he find the killers of his buddy and his family, and beyond that, will he find the ones responsible?
And as to that, there is no doubt. They don’t have a chance. Not in a million years. Invincible heroes are boring.
February 16th, 2011 at 2:01 am
I read Crais early on, enjoyed them, but somewhere along the way he and Elvis both just dropped off my radar.
He’s not a bad writer by any means, but I just lost interest — sort of as if he took a sharp right and I took a sharp left.
I know I’ve probably missed a good many fine books, but I can’t work up much energy to find out.
My problem, not his.
February 16th, 2011 at 2:06 am
There’s no denying that Robert Crais is a fine writer. But maybe what you and Michael are both saying is that maybe he’s just a little too … slick? Not enough rough edges, perhaps?
I haven’t read enough of the Elvis Cole books to be able to say this, but I think Cole is much more interesting character than Pike. Pike’s better off in the background, being taciturn and efficient — and a little mysterious.
February 16th, 2011 at 4:46 am
Steve
Slick is probably the nicest word. But for me almost generic is the problem. Not that I always mind generic — Michael Shayne and Johnny Liddell were both generic eyes, but this time it defeated me. Maybe it’s the name — maybe I expected a character named Elvis to be something a bit different.
As I said, I don’t know, and this is strictly a personal take and not a critique of Crais or his characters.
I read somewhere else, and I don’t recall where, that the problem with Pike was the same as if Robert Parker had tried to do a book centering on Hawk.
But increasingly I’m finding that with too many contemporary writers in the crime field — especially what is left of the hard boiled genre and private eye novel in general — there is a blandness to the product, a sameness, an almost laziness creeping in.
That’s not true of everyone, but certainly some of the big names seem to be churning out more cookie cutters than they once did.
Maybe it’s because there are no small books anymore in mainstream publishing and everyone who gets in print tends to be at a certain level and of a certain voice — not bad books or even mediocre or average books, but predictable books. Predictable length, thrills, plot, solution, even so called surprises.
February 16th, 2011 at 6:34 pm
That’s quite a condemnation of the current crop of thrillers: predictable surprises!
February 16th, 2011 at 6:35 pm
Re Robert B. Parker and his not ever doing books centered on Hawk, I think he once said something like “I don’t know him well enough.”