Tag Archive: Crime fiction


Robert Crais: It’s a cop thing.

CHASING DARKNESS by Robert Crais (First published by Orion Books, 2008)

 crais1This is the first Robert Crais book I’ve read and to put this into true context I have a fair amount of catching up to do. This is number 11 in an ongoing series of novels featuring a LA based private detective Elvis Cole and his reliable yet taciturn sidekick Joe Pike. There are already another five in the series.

Cole is the kind of maverick investigator who will say things like ‘I suppose I should’ve called the cops but I didn’t’. The implicit message is that to get results you need to take risks and ignore conventional methods.

He has enough inside contacts to enjoy the benefits of official resources without the burden of having to play by the rules. When Pike breaks into the home of a suspect, Cole says reassuringly. “Don’t worry. It’s a cop thing” . Continue reading

The recent BBC adaption of novels featuring the improbably named Italian detective Aurelio Zen makes the name of the late Michael Dibdin topical again.

Not one to miss an opportunity, here is a review of a non-Zen novel set in England which I read a while back.

Dirty Tricks by Michael Dibdin (1991)

There is precious little gallantry in Dibdin’s fictional world. His male lead (never named) is a shiftless shit of the first order; but he is good company. The action takes place among Oxford’s middlebrow executive set where our ‘hero’ is initially  a fish out of water. Continue reading