Indigo Slam: An Elvis Cole Novel [Mass Market Paperback]

Robert Crais (Author)

Book Description

Series: Elvis Cole Novels | Publication Date: February 4, 2003

Life in the California sun suits Elvis Cole—until the day a fifteen-year-old girl and her two younger siblings walk into his office. Then everything changes.

Three years ago, a Seattle family ran for their lives in a hail of bullets. Hired by three kids to find their missing father, Elvis now must pick up the cold pieces of a drama that began that night. What he finds is a sordid tale of high crimes and illicit drugs. As clues to a man’s secret life emerge from the shadows, Elvis knows he’s not just up against ruthless mobsters and some very angry Feds. He’s facing a storm of desperation and conspiracy—bearing down on three children whose only crime was their survival. . . .

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Readers who complain that there's too much wisecracking and cute icon worship in Robert Crais's books about Los Angeles private eye Elvis Cole will be glad to find these traits downplayed (but not totally disappeared) in this story about Cole's search for a missing printer whose specialty is funny money. The book is centered by the presence of the printer's three children--especially the motherly 15-year-old Teri and the obnoxious 12-year-old Charles--who hire Elvis from the phone book. Cole, hoping to become the stepfather of the son of his own lady love, gets sucked in by the children's combination of need and family unity, and soon finds himself in the middle of a shooting war between Russian gangsters, Vietnamese patriots, and ambiguous Federal agents. Previous Elvis outings in paperback: Sunset Express, Free Fall, Lullaby Town, The Monkey's Raincoat, Stalking the Angel, Voodoo River. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Having made it big with his last Elvis Cole mystery (Sunset Express, Hyperion, 1996), Crais here puts Cole on the track of a missing father who seems to have criminal connections.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Fawcett (February 4, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345435648
• ISBN-13: 978-0345435644
• Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 0.9 x 6.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (59 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #35,083 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #22 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Mystery & Thrillers > Mystery > Hard-Boiled

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.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You can't go wrong with Elvis, February 21, 2003

By 

mrliteral - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

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This review is from: Indigo Slam: An Elvis Cole Novel (Mass Market Paperback)

For me, the mystery of Indigo Slam is why it was out of print for years. Originally published in 1997, it didn't come out in paperback till 2003 (and the hardcover disappeared), while other later Crais novels (including another Cole book) did the usual hardcover-to-paperback cycle and remained on the shelves. Whatever the reason, it's here now and it's really good.

Elvis Cole, self-proclaimed World's Greatest Detective, is hired by three children to find their father. Motivated more by conscience than money, he helps them. When it turns out that the father is on the run from the Russian mob, Elvis starts getting in over his head. Fortunately, there is his laconic partner Pike to watch his back.

Mystery fans will see a certain similarity between the Cole books and Robert Parker's Spenser. Both feature wise-cracking tough private eyes with mysterious but generally good-hearted partners. Unfortunately, over the years, I found Spenser getting unlikably smug and self-righteous, while Cole remains a pleasure to read about. And both Cole and Pike are much more well-developed than either Spenser or Hawk, neither of whom even reveal their full names (the single-named hero is a bit of a tired gimmick nowadays...Richard Stark's Parker is forgiven because he's been around since the mid-60's).

You don't need to have read other Elvis Cole novels to get into this one; Crais makes it easy to get right into things. For fans of the private-eye novel, you'll find this - like all the other novels by Crais - delightfully entertaining.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Mediocre effort, February 24, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Indigo Slam: An Elvis Cole Novel (Mass Market Paperback)

I've really enjoyed Crais' Elvis Cole series -- especially LA Requiem -- but Indigo Slam was a disappointing, even boring read. The book starts well enough with an intriguing story about three kids abandoned by their father. Crais ruins the book by solving the mystery quickly in the first half of the book. That leaves about a hundred pages for utterly unbelievable shootouts and a farcically complicated end-game designed by Elvis. Are we supposed to find the notion of multiple shoot-outs believable? Is Elvis immortal? Can he in fact be killed? You could skip the final part of the book -- I skimmed it.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nothing is What it Seems, November 13, 2005

By 

Vesta Irene (the Pacific Northwest) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Indigo Slam: An Elvis Cole Novel (Mass Market Paperback)

It was plant day in Los Angeles, at least that what Private Investigator Elvis Cole calls the day of the month that he waters his dying plants. Elvis isn't good with plants. Anyway he's busy caring for them when Teresa, Charles and Winona Haines walk into his office. They want Elvis to find their father. Elvis doesn't work for children, so he sends them away. However, after they leave he realizes that he's screwed up. The kids were obviously in trouble, had come to him for help and he'd failed them. He rushes downstairs in time to see fifteen-year-old Teresa pull away from the curb. He dashes to his car and follows, thinking that the girl, who is too young to drive, has a lot on her young shoulders.

He decides to help the children and Teresa pulls a wad of hundred dollar bills from her purse, but he tells her he won't take money from her, she insists and he accepts two of the bills and leaves, thinking it'll be an easy job. But as usual in a Robert Crais detective thriller, things are not always as they seem.

Elvis goes to the print shop where Charles Haines, the errant father, works and finds out he was fired because the boss caught him shooting up. The kid's father is a junky and that's the last thing Elvis wants to tell them. From the phone bill he learns Charles called Seattle several times, so he flies up there on his own nickle, asks questions and is kidnapped, beat up and almost killed by Russian mobsters who want to know why Elvis is asking question about Charles, who's last name by the way isn't Haines, but Hewitt. Fortunately he's saved at the last minute by U.S. Marshals who want to know the same thing.

Elvis figures out that Charles had flown the coup from the federal witness program. That he was a big time counterfeiter and that some very bad guys want him dead and that they'll kill anybody who gets in their way. Fortunately, Elvis has his pal, the quiet and broody Pike to watch his back.

And thus it begins, the twists and turns of a Robert Crais novel where, as I said above, nothing is as it seems. Just when you think you've got a handle on the story it takes a quick right turn and you're slapping yourself upside the head, murmuring, "Why didn't I see that?" INDIGO SLAM, like every book Robert Crais has written, is a five star read, one that won't let you sleep, eat or go to work until you finish, it's that good.

Reviewed by Vesta Irene