Crais has never written a book with the power and intensity of Taken. 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. She knows it’s a fake, that her daughter is off with the guy Nita will call only “that boy,” and that they need money: “Even smart girls do stupid things when they think a boy loves them.” But she is wrong. 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 one another. They steal drugs, guns, and people — buying and selling victims like commodities, and killing the ones they can’t get a price for. Cole and Pike find the spot where the couple were taken. There are tire tracks, bullet casings, and bloodstains. They know things look as bad as possible. But they are wrong, too. It is about to get much worse. Going undercover to find the couple and buy them back, Cole himself is taken, and disappears. 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. But he may already be too late. Thrilling, emotional, passionate, with some of the best characters and well-crafted writing in all of crime fiction, Taken is further proof that “Crais just keeps getting better” (Publishers Weekly).
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About the Author
Robert Crais is the 2006 recipient of the Ross Macdonald Literary Award. He is the author of numerous New York Times bestsellers, including The Two Minute Rule, The Forgotten Man, and L.A. Requiem.
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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.
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.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
56 of 62 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Crais is at the top of his game. Riveting,
By
This review is from: Taken (Hardcover)
Talk about an enjoyable read. This novel has it all: Elvis Cole and Joe Pike, innocent young adults, a determined parent, evil men and women with no sense of morality, and bajadores - ruthless bandits who prey on other bandits. Mix them all together with drugs, weapons, the buying and selling of victims, and brutal murder and you have the ingredients for compelling novel.Add the painstaking detective work, the genuine humanity, the nerve-racking tension, the thrilling action, and unbelievable suspense that only a talented writer like Robert Crais can bring to this novel and you have a thriller that you won't soon forget. Taken is the fifteenth Elvis Cole and Joe Pike novel and it's the first to feature them both equally. While I've enjoyed the last two books that had Joe Pike in the starring role, this novel ratchets up the tension by having Cole lead early and Pike take over in the second half. The story centers on a young Latina and her Anglo boyfriend who are kidnapped by bandits along the Mexican border. These criminals are the worst of the worst - preying on other criminals figuring they can't or won't go to the police. This novel centers on bajadores who steal immigrants bound for the United States. This people kidnapping business is a rampant but often ignored problem along the Mexican border. The mother of the kidnapped woman hires Elvis Cole to rescue her daughter. Cole soon discovers what has happened to her and he enters into a risky arrangement with a Korean organized criminal. It's a desperate move and Cole knows it. "I was now in business with a Korean gang known for extortion, brutality, and violence, and about to put my trust into a drug cartel known for torture and mass murder. I told myself it was worth it. I told myself I had no choice. I lied to myself, and knew I was lying, but chose to believe the lies." When the plan doesn't work out, Cole is seized by the bajadores and Pike must come to his rescue. With backup from fellow mercenary Jon Stone, Pike follows the trail left by his captors and holds nothing back from search for his best friend. The feds are also on the hunt for Cole and Pike must find him first before the federal agents make mistakes that could blow Cole's cover - and his life. This is vintage Robert Crais weaving one of the most suspenseful thrillers I've read in a long time. This is a book you'll want to savor but if you're like me, the tension will build so quickly that you'll be unable to put it down. I finished it in a weekend. With fewer things to do, I'd have been done the same day.
14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Contrary View,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Taken (Hardcover)
I've read all of the Robert Crais novels available for a Kindle. While this is an entertaining book, it is not, in my opinion, up to the standards of his previous Elvis Cole/Joe Pike books. My experience is that a writer's talent is most obvious in the dialogue in a book. With good writers it's believable and flows easily. Here, it seems to be somewhat forced, especially that between Joe Pike and Jon Stone. To me, Elvis Cole and Joe Pike seem to have become caricatures of the ways they were developed in previous books. Jack Reacher has the same malady. I hope it hasn't spread to these two.As a post-script, I should add that this book is not really representative of Robert Crais' talent. His other books in the series were so good that I read them in order, non-stop. If this had been the first that I'd read, I doubt I would have done that. As a long-time reader of virtually nothing but books of this type, I'd rate this book as fairly good, but not close to others in the series. I hope he gets back on course with his next book.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Spectacular,
By Richard B. Schwartz (Columbia, Missouri USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (VINE VOICE) (REAL NAME)
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Taken (Hardcover)
I don't use that word lightly, but in this case it applies. There are some books so compelling that you carry them around--everywhere--reading a chapter here, a paragraph there. I think of Andrew Vachss's debut novel Flood, Harris' Silence of the Lambs . . . and now, Robert Crais's Taken.Abduction novels are not my favorites, but here all of the dangers of such novels (claustrophobic settings, excrutiating emotional situations) are happily avoided. Crais uses short chapters, multiple points of view and mixed time levels to create a masterpiece of suspense. This, however, is not the kind of suspense that entails unimaginable resolutions. We know that Elvis and Joe Pike are going to triumph in the end; what we wait for, what we anxiously anticipate, is the body count. Elvis has been hired by a woman in Los Angeles to find her daughter, a star student from Loyola Marymount and an all-around good person. She and her boyfriend (concerning whom the mother has some reservations) have been in Palm Springs. The two disappear and the mother receives demands for her daughter's return at a ridiculously low price: $500. What the mother doesn't know is that her daughter and her boyfriend have been swept up in an unrelated event in which a group of bajadores (bandits who steal from other bandits) have captured a group of illegal immigrants. They then proceed to call the relatives of their captives and demand ransom. They put the captives on the phone and torture them so that their relatives hear the screams and are more likely to loosen their purse strings. When the money runs out the captives are murdered and thrown into ditches in the desert. Fortunately, Elvis and Joe are on the case and they're aided by Nancie Stendahl (an ATF muck-a-muck who is the aunt of the captured Latina girl's boyfriend). Aunt Nancie is pure standup, but she has to work within the law. Not so for Jon Stone, an addition to the cast who is an old compadre of Joe Pike's, a veteran of various mercenary engagements, Delta force operations, and so on. (Note to Mr. Crais: we absolutely must have more of Jon Stone in the future.) I won't spoil the plot, but I will say that Elvis is taken captive--a minor setback, since he (and the reader) know that the cavalry riding in his direction consist of Joe and Jon (not to mention Aunt Nancie). And there's more. The captured illegals include a group of Koreans whose transport to the U.S. has been paid for by the leaders of the Korean mob. These individuals are not amused by the actions of the bajadores and they are willing to talk to Elvis, Joe and Jon about a possible partnership. The bajadores, of course, are very, very nasty bits of business, given to intimidating the weak, abusing women and reducing their captives to animals. They call them their pollos. We know very early on what these people need: a visit from Joe Pike and his assortment of friends and allies. It's early in the year, but Taken may just be the suspense thriller of 2012. It is already Robert Crais's best book. Do not miss it.
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