The Watchman [Paperback]

Robert Crais (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Orion (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd ); Reprint edition (November 28, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0752881914
• ISBN-13: 978-0752881911
• Product Dimensions: 4.4 x 0.9 x 7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (176 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,811,140 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.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

57 of 62 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Everything's Zen, March 10, 2007

By 

Gary Griffiths (Los Altos Hills, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Watchman: A Joe Pike Novel (Hardcover)

In Joe Pike, "the world's greatest detective's" enigmatic and stoically violent sidekick of the "Elvis Cole" novels, the talented Robert Crais has created one of most intriguing characters in contemporary popular fiction. But with the wisecracking Cole still mostly sidelined from injuries suffered in "The Forgotten Man", Pike takes center stage in this well plotted, fast moving crime drama.

With his red-arrowed deltoids "going forward, never back", Pike, to repay an old debt, reluctantly takes on the task of protecting Larkin Barkley, a spoiled LA society brat drawn with shades of Paris Hilton, right down to the rat-dog-in-the-purse detail. Returning home from late night revelry, Barkley t-bones a Mercedes full of the wrong people, and in a convoluted twist, ends up as a witness under protection. But when it becomes clear that the folks who'd prefer that Barkley not testify are deadly serious, Joe Pike gets the job of keeping the pouting debutant safe and sound.

As always, Crais' prose is witty and fast moving. Joe Pike, who is about as chatty as Mount Rushmore, is cleverly contrasted against Larkin's tantrums. And Elvis Cole, while taking care not to swing the spotlight too far away from Pike's solo debut, throws around enough of his patented one-liners to keep his hardcore base smiling. But if the bond that builds gradually between Joe and Barkley stretches the bounds of credibility just a bit, this is, after all, fiction, and besides, Crais does a masterful job of building the sexual tension and creating - perish the thought - the hint of a soft side to Pike's impenetrable persona.

While perhaps lacking the edge and grit of today's "garage writers of grime" - guys like Charlie Huston, Duane Swierczynski, Charlie Stella, or Victor Gischler - Crais' polished pages capture LA's sleaze and majesty, designed for appeal to broad audiences. All in all, a slick and well-rendered effort from one of today's best writers of mainstream fiction - top entertainment that is well worth the time and the 15-buck hardcover.

73 of 91 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Man of Action, February 27, 2007

By 

Mel Odom (Moore, OK USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Watchman: A Joe Pike Novel (Hardcover)

Joe Pike is the epitome of crime tough guys. Nobody does it better. He was a special forces soldier before he became an LAPD cop. He took the fall on charges that shouldn't have been dropped on him and was busted out of the LAPD. He became a mercenary and a some-time private eye that paired up with the World's Greatest Detective, Elvis Cole.

He has red arrows pointing forward tattooed on his deltoids because Joe Pike does not back up.

This is the guy I've been waiting years to read about. Author Robert Crais introduced one of the funniest and emotionally complex private detectives to come along in years in Elvis Cole, but he also crafted one of the hardest heroes to see print in decades. Joe Pike is the king of cool, the master of the understatement, and a man haunted by personal demons he'll never talk about.

Hired by a friend of a friend, Joe agrees to bodyguard Larkin Barkley, a young woman who's the daughter of a multi-millionaire businessman. Larkin has a self-destructive tendency that only Joe seems to understand. Unfortunately, some of the same things she's in denial about are the same things that plague Joe. As the two fight to stay alive, and fight with each other, they come to realize that the only way they're going to get through the situation alive is to rely on and trust each other. Both of them have issues with that.

Larkin is a witness in a brutal slaying. The murderer is believed to be a brutal head of a drug cartel who will stop at nothing to kill Larkin.

The book starts off with a bang, with bullets ripping through the air and Pike's truck from the first pages to the close of the book. The novel grabs the reader by the throat and literally demands the reader's full attention. The assault on the reader's senses is relentless.

Crais is an elaborate plotter, but it all makes sense when he shakes out the final twist. But the best thing of all is getting to ride shotgun with Joe Pike while he deals with enemy guns and the hostile past he has that keeps getting in the way while he's protecting Larkin.

The dialogue, the descriptions, and the pacing are so well choreographed that you can see the movie spinning in your head. I liked the cameos that Elvis Cole had in this novel, but I'm glad Joe got to keep center stage. I really didn't think the novel would work that well because sometimes if a writer shines a light too brightly on an enigmatic hero that everything that existed is turned into a cheap trick.

But Joe Pike is for real. He's an unstoppable force and an avenging angel all rolled into one. The publishers mention that this is a JOE PIKE NOVEL right on the cover. Hopefully there will be future installments. If so, they'd be most welcome.

26 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Grows on you as it builds up, February 28, 2007

By 

Peter G. Keen "rabidreader" (virginia usa) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Watchman: A Joe Pike Novel (Hardcover)

Around page 100, I would have rated this just 3-4 stars. It ends up as a firm 5 by the end. There seem to me to be two distinct strands in thriller writing -- character builders and plot artists. Crais is more of a plotter than a character guy; I never quite get inside his two heroes, Pike and Cole -- they seem just a little artificial. But he is superb in plotting. What begins as a routine story line weaves, turns, double backs and grabs you to the last pages. He is a good stylist -- deft, brief and precise. He is also superb in his portrayals of violence and cruelty; you get a sense here of Pike's dissociation and his own detachment. The heroine -- Paris Hilton but without the intellect -- does not come alive for me; again, too artificial. The villains are shadows not realities. But, this is a minor point. The book works superbly. I loved it.