The First Rule (A Joe Pike Novel) (Joe Pike Novels) [Hardcover]

Robert Crais (Author)

Book Description

Release date: January 12, 2010 | Series: Joe Pike Novels

From the New York Times-bestselling author who sets the standard for intense, powerful crime- writing comes a blistering thriller featuring Joe Pike and Elvis Cole.

The Watchman put Joe Pike, Elvis Cole's strong, taciturn partner, front and center, and not only won Robert Crais new audiences but remarkable reviews. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel said "Robert Crais elevates crime fiction" and now with The First Rule he does it again.

The organized criminal gangs of the former Soviet Union are bound by what they call the thieves' code. The first rule is this: A thief must forsake his mother, father, brothers, and sisters. He must have no family-no wife, no children. We are his family. If any of the rules are broken, it is punishable by death.

Frank Meyer had the American dream-until the day a professional crew invaded his home and murdered everyone inside. The only thing out of the ordinary about Meyer was that- before the family and the business and the normal life-a younger Frank Meyer had worked as a professional mercenary, with a man named Joe Pike. The police think Meyer was hiding something very bad, but Pike does not. With the help of Cole, he sets out on a hunt of his own-an investigation that quickly entangles them both in a web of ancient grudges, blood ties, blackmail, vengeance, double crosses, and cutthroat criminal­ity, and at the heart of it, an act so terrible even Pike and Cole have no way to measure it. Sometimes, the past is never dead. It's not even past.

The First Rule is the most astonishing novel yet from the master of the crime thriller.

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Robert Crais on Joe Pike

Joe Pike is back, and this time I'm ready.

I have always received a lot of fan mail, but nothing prepared us for the tsunami that flooded my website when The Watchman was published. (The Watchman was the first Joe Pike novel. Joe is now returning in The First Rule.) I mean, I knew Joe was popular, but c'monnnn.

We always see a spike in e-mail when a book is released (by "we," I'm talking about myself and the sorely overworked Carol T, who creates our newsletter and manages our e-mail). This spike typically lasts eight to ten weeks, before leveling back to our average of about twenty e-mails a day. But when The Watchman was published, the spike was way larger, and didn't begin to fade until three months later. Then, amazingly, it grew again—coming back stronger than ever as thousands of readers—Joe Pike fanatics, bless'm!—spread the word. And the word was: sex.

Like Elvis Cole, Joe had always gotten a lot of mail from women, but the tone of his mail now changed. They sent gifts. They sent pictures. They wrote, "I love Joe Pike," but not in a way suggesting they were fond of him or maybe kinda crushing on him. Pike's fans were feral. They said, "I WANT Joe Pike."

Meaning: Pike is my love slave!

I get it. It is not lost on me that the young male heartthrobs in the current crop of insanely successful vampire films are all brooding bad-boy loners, held in check from their evil ways only by the love of a good woman, who is herself moved by their tortured hearts. Has any vampire been as lethal as Joe Pike, or as tortured?

Pike is the ultimate bad boy. He is dangerous, enigmatic, and male with a capital M, but it is his damaged soul that makes him sexy with a capital S. His lack of emotion suggests an inner landscape so damaged it is as barren as the desert surrounding Tikrit. It also suggests an emptiness waiting to be filled, and therein lies Pike's tragic nature and, I suspect, the sexy-hot core of his huge appeal. My female readers intuit that he is redeemable, and an awful lot of them want to help with his redemption!

For men, Joe Pike's appeal is different, but no less powerful. Pike takes no crap and fears no man, and this is a pretty common fantasy. Try to imagine Joe Pike getting cut off in traffic or shoved off the sidewalk? Ha—they wouldn't dare! Pike’s red-arrow tattoos probably sum up the fantasy best of all: here is a man who will not back up, or back down, and pretty much every guy wants to be that man (even if only in a fantasy life!) from time to time, or have such a friend as his wingman.

And speaking of friends—Pike wouldn't be Pike if it weren't for Elvis Cole, so hard-core Elvis Cole fans need have no fear: Elvis Cole is back, playing a large and important role in The First Rule. I could no more write a Joe Pike novel without Elvis than I could write an Elvis Cole novel without Joe. These guys are more than partners. They are friends. They are two underdogs who have turned themselves into heroes. --Robert Crais

(Photo © Patrik Giardino)

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From Publishers Weekly

When garment importer Frank Meyer and his family are executed in their Los Angeles home at the start of bestseller Crais's adrenaline-fueled second thriller to feature PI Joe Pike (after The Watchman), LAPD detectives soon connect Meyer to Pike, who knew each other from their days as military contractors. Pike is convinced that Meyer, who left soldiering to start a family, wasn't dirty, even though his murder is the seventh in a series of violent robberies where the victims were all professional criminals. Determined to clear his friend's name, Pike discovers that Frank's nanny and her family have ties to Eastern European organized crime. With the help of PI partner Elvis Cole (the lead in Chasing Darkness and eight other books), Pike engages in a dangerous—and not always legal—game of cat and mouse with some of the city's most dangerous crooks. Pike emerges as an enigmatically appealing hero, whose lethal skills never overshadow his unflappable sense of morality. (Jan.)
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 308 pages
• Publisher: G. P. Putnam's Sons; 1st edition (January 12, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0399156135
• ISBN-13: 978-0399156137
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (173 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #310,488 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Robert Crais is the author of the best-selling Elvis Cole novels. He was the 2006 recipient of the Ross Macdonald Literary Award.

A native of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, he grew up on the banks of the Mississippi River in a blue collar family of oil refinery workers and four generations of police officers. He purchased a second-hand 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.

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 scripting numerous series pilots and movies-of-the-week for the major networks.

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. 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. The resulting novel, The Monkey's Raincoat, won the Anthony and Macavity Awards and was nominated for the Edgar Award. It has since been selected as one of the 100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association.

Crais conceived of the novel as a stand-alone, but realized that, in Elvis Cole, he had created an ideal and powerful character through which to comment upon his life and times. Elvis Cole's readership skyrocketed in 1999 upon the publication of L. A. Requiem, which was a New York Times and Los Angeles Times bestseller and forever changed the way Crais conceived of and structured his novels. Larger and deeper in scope, Publishers Weekly wrote of L. A. Requiem, "Crais has stretched himself the way another Southern California writer, Ross Macdonald, always tried to do, to write a mystery novel with a solid literary base." Booklist added, "This is an extraordinary crime novel that should not be pigeonholed by genre. The best books always land outside preset boundaries. A wonderful experience."

Crais followed with his first non-series novel, Demolition Angel, which was published in 2000 and featured former Los Angeles Police Department Bomb Technician Carol Starkey. In 2001, Crais published his second non-series novel, Hostage, which was named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times and was a world-wide bestseller. The editors of Amazon.com selected Hostage as the #1 thriller of the year. A film adaptation of Hostage was released in 2005, starring Bruce Willis as ex-LAPD SWAT negotiator Jeff Talley.

Robert Crais lives in the Santa Monica mountains with his wife, three cats, and many thousands of books. Additional information can be found at his website, www.robertcrais.com.

Amazon Author Rankbeta 

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#80 Overall (See top 100 authors)

#7 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Action & Adventure

#7 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Action & Adventure

#12 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Mystery & Thrillers > Mystery

#13 in Books > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Mystery

#21 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Mystery & Thrillers > Thrillers

#7 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Action & Adventure

#7 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Action & Adventure

#12 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Mystery & Thrillers > Mystery

#13 in Books > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Mystery

#21 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Mystery & Thrillers > Thrillers

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

109 of 118 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Fast Moving, Decent Plot, Quick Read November 29, 2009

By Burgmicester VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

Robert Crais has created one of the genre's favorite character sets: Elvis Cole and Joe Pike. The first several books focused on Elvis, but with "The First Rule", Crais has now published his second "Joe Pike" novel. The action is constant, the pace is quick, and the plot is good. Crais has selected the Serbian Organized Crime mobs to set this story. One of Pike's long time friends and family are murdered like animals and Joe Pike takes this personally. From there you can guess how the pace and action rip ahead.

Elvis Cole is called on to help as are a couple of other characters that Crais has used in the past. But this is mostly a Joe Pike story. While there are some twists and turns, the plot moves along towards a somewhat believable conclusion. We learn a little about the Serbian mob and how they are accumulating wealth in America, but there is little depth to this novel.

In this book, Crais has taken out any of the filler. There are no underlying themes, no further character development on any of our favorites, and no attempt at humor - a Crais trademark for the Elvis Cole stories. I vacillated between a three star or four star rating for this book, but moved it to four stars because I enjoyed the book - as quick a read as it was. At 305 pages, it is good for a couple of hours on a plane or to while away the afternoon. I am a little disappointed in Crais as the last several books have been very average without his trademark snide humor and camaraderie between characters. This book could have been Joe Smith and Elvis Jones instead of Pike and Cole. There is very little that ties them together in this story. It is difficult to rate this book without matching my expectations to the story that is delivered. I expected more and wanted more, but the story delivered is good, just not what I wanted.

79 of 97 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Would be good for most, but subpar for Crais November 28, 2009

By Tung Yin VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

Robert Crais is one of those authors whose new books -- especially in the Elvis Cole series -- send me rushing to the bookstore or to Amazon. There's nothing necessarily unique about Crais' storytelling or his protagonists; just skilled writing, tight plotting, and a corny but endearing private detective (Cole) who answers his phone "the world's greatest detective."

Cole is a character in "The First Rule," but a rather minor character. The main focus is on Cole's sidekick, the taciturn but lethal Joe Pike. Pike is basically superhuman -- he doesn't seem to need much sleep, he's lethally accurate with guns or his body, he doesn't talk much, and he's always there to help Cole out. In small doses, he's an effective character. But he's hard-pressed to carry a book as the main character.

To be clear, this is not the first time that Crais has used Pike as the lead -- see also "L.A. Requiem." Like that book, this one is a story of revenge. An apparent home invasion gone wrong leaves Pike's former mercenary colleague Frank Meyer and his family dead (appallingly brutal, but nice to see Crais actually have the guts to write a nasty scene rather than be safe and saccharine by having the family members somehow get away), and Pike is out to take care of the killers. Along the way, Pike has to dodge the police (one officer says to Pike that it's a wonder someone who's killed as many people as he -- Pike -- has remains free), the federal Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms department, and an emotionally hardened Serbian prostitute and her protector. As might be expected, much mayhem results.

Because Pike is so powerful, there actually isn't much tension in this book. It's like Steven Seagal in the movies; invincibility can be boring. What's worse is that Pike is so uninteresting as a character. He has no wants, no weaknesses, no connections other than to his former "crew" and to Cole, so what we're left with is a methodical tracking of the killers, interrupted occasionally by cliches like the deadly man who would hospitalize anyone who took his sunglasses off, but lets a 10 month old baby play with them.

19 of 23 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Joe Pike becomes Jack Reacher February 3, 2010

By Ms Terry

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

I've loved Joe Pike from the moment we first met him. His deep flaws make him intensely interesting...but.... in this latest outing he seems to have become less realistically human and more auto-hero. Pike is Cole's foil and was strong enough to carry a book only when we deep dove into his miserable and formative childhood. Without sufficient use of Cole's wryness as a complement, Pike morphs into Jack Reacher. A great shame. Crais is one of the better writers in a sea of formula - driven dreck. Come back Elvis - and bring Joe with you as Tonto - he's just not complex enough to be the masked man, I fear.