His first efforts proved unsuccessful, but upon the death of his father in 1985, Crais was inspired to create Elvis Cole, using elements of his own life as the basis of the story. In the mid-eighties, feeling constrained by the collaborative working requirements of Hollywood, Crais resigned from a lucrative position as a contract writer and television producer in order to pursue his lifelong dream of becoming a novelist. He received an Emmy nomination for his work on Hill Street Blues, but is most proud of his 4-hour NBC miniseries, Cross of Fire, which the New York Times declared: 'A searing and powerful documentation of the Ku Klux Klan’s rise to national prominence in the 20s.' Parker, and John Steinbeck.Īfter years of amateur film-making and writing short fiction, he journeyed to Hollywood in 1976 where he quickly found work writing scripts for such major television series as Hill Street Blues, Cagney & Lacey, and Miami Vice, as well as numerous series pilots and Movies-of-the-Week for the major networks. Other literary influences include Dashiell Hammett, Ernest Hemingway, Robert B. He purchased a secondhand paperback of Raymond Chandler’s The Little Sister when he was fifteen, which inspired his lifelong love of writing, Los Angeles, and the literature of crime fiction. A native of Louisiana, he grew up on the banks of the Mississippi River in a blue collar family of oil refinery workers and police officers. Robert Crais is the author of the best-selling Elvis Cole novels. Going undercover to find the two young people and buy them back, Cole himself is taken, and now it is up to Joe Pike to retrace Cole’s steps, burning through the hard and murderous world of human traffickers to find his friend. They know things look as bad as possible. There are tire tracks, bullet casings, and bloodstains.

They steal drugs, guns, and people – buying and selling victims like commodities, and killing the ones they can’t get a price for.Įlvis Cole and Joe Pike find the spot where they were taken. The girl and her boyfriend have been taken by bajadores – bandits who prey on other bandits, border professionals who prey not only on innocent victims, but on each other.

She knows it’s a fake, that her daughter is off with the guy Nita will only call 'that boy,' and that they need money: 'Even smart girls do stupid things when they think a boy loves them.'īut Nita is wrong. When Nita Morales hires Elvis Cole to find her missing adult daughter, she isn’t afraid, even though she’s gotten a phone call asking for ransom.

Taken by Robert Crais