"THE LAST DETECTIVE" by Robert Crais (A-)

There isn't the usual lighthearted introduction to this Elvis Cole novel. The initial banter has been dispensed with and in its place the tension immediately races at you like a speeding train. While there are those who like their novels to read like an unremitting literary tour de force, I prefer to have at least a few moments of levity to lighten the mood.

The great film director Alfred Hitchcock opined that there should always be moments of humor to offer a measure of emotional relief to his movies. He made a practice out of doing this, and his films have become classics of the genre as a result. Here Crais has given us a tightly wound plot with the characters so fixated on solving the crime that the social niceties have largely been dispensed with. I miss them, and this story is the less because of their absence.

Ben Chenier is kidnaped during the first few pages of this story, and then the time ticks by like a time bomb with the growing possibility that young Ben may never be found alive because the three thugs that have him are highly trained killers and experts at what they do. Ben is the ten year old son of Lucy Chenier, the attorney from Louisiana who has moved out to Los Angeles because she is romantically involved with Elvis.

There was a threat that Ben might have been kidnaped in Robert Crais' earlier 1999 masterpiece, "L. A. Requiem," but that turned out to be a hoax that never materialized. Nevertheless, this scary plot thread has been introduced and now it comes horribly true in this 2003 Elvis Cole novel which picks up where "L.A. Requiem" left off.

After being shot several times by a serial killer in "Requiem," Joe Pike had spent seven months in the hospital recovering from his severe internal injuries. Since leaving the hospital, he has been on a strenuous rehabilitation regimen to get back to his peak physical form, and now he travels to Alaska to face a different challenge.

Meanwhile Elvis Cole has remained in Los Angeles to work on his relationship with Lucy Chenier, now a legal commentator for a local television station. He gets to be a surrogate father to her son, much to the disapproval of his real father back in Louisiana. These warm family moments are very gratifying for Elvis, as he never knew his own father and was raised in a foster home after his mother had deserted him.

Robert Crais builds upon the relationships started in his prior Elvis Cole stories and continues them forward into his new novels. This adds to the depth and piquancy of each story, as Elvis and Joe are seen as living somewhat normal lives, at least normal as things can be for two detectives who are professional killers. As rough as their profession may be, they still have friends and associates who round out the story so that they aren't functioning in a social vacuum.

The only constant seems to be that the women with whom they become romantically involved are only able to get so close and then the relationship is pretty sure to founder. Now that she has moved out to Los Angeles, Lucy Chenier is experiencing first hand the difficulty of being in love with someone who lives such a dangerous life. It can't be easy for Lucy, who has to wonder every day if she will have to go down to the morgue to identify Elvis in a body bag instead of having him come home for dinner.

Ben is staying with Elvis while Lucy is away on a business trip. One afternoon Ben wanders down the hill behind the home and mysteriously disappears into thin air. Elvis soon receives a threatening telephone call accusing him of committing atrocities in Vietnam and claiming that Ben has been taken as a "5-2 pay back," a reference to his Army Ranger team. The caller knows too much about his tour in Vietnam, and the crime scene where Ben was taken offers so few clues that Elvis and Joe begin to suspect that the kidnaper is a professional who will not be making many mistakes. This has all of the earmarks of a mercenary at work, but who could afford him, and what could the rationale possibly be?

Lucy's wealthy ex-husband, Richard Chenier, rushes out to Los Angeles with a retinue including a security chief and two retired New Orleans police detectives. He immediately blames Elvis for getting Ben into this mess in a none-too-subtle effort to destroy their relationship. He is very possessive and he resents the fact that Lucy has deigned to fall in love with a lowly detective. He is appalled by the thought that Elvis might become a stepfather to Ben, and he also hates the fact that Lucy has taken Ben all of the way across the country. Lucy knows that Richard has the right to be there, but she resents his interference and his wild charges against Elvis. Nevertheless, the charges sting and Elvis can tell that Lucy is beginning to doubt both him and the wisdom of their relationship.

The problem is that Elvis doesn't know what all this is all about any more than anyone else, and the LA police detectives don't want him mucking up their investigation. It is only through the good graces of Detective Carole Starkey that he is able to continue working on the case. Now three teams of investigators are stumbling all over each other to solve the case, and none of them trusts or respects the other. Elvis keeps promising the increasingly agitated Lucy that he will bring her son back to her. 2003, Doubleday, 302 pages.