Book Preview The Two Minute Rule (2006) Robert Crais * PROLOGUE: MARCHENKO AND PARSONS circled the bank for sixteen minutes, huffing Krylon Royal Blue Metallic to regulate the crystal as they worked up their nut. Marchenko believed Royal Blue Metallic gave them an edge in the bank, made them fierce and wild-eyed, Royal Blue being … Read more
Book Preview The First Rule Joe Pike 02 Robert Crais The organized criminal gangs from the fifteen republics of the former Soviet Union are governed by what they call the Vorovskoy Zakon, the thieves’ code, which is comprised of eighteen written rules. The first rule is this: A thief must forsake his mother, father, brothers, … Read more
Book Preview The Watchman Robert Crais * PROLOGUE: City of Angels THE CITY was hers for a single hour, just the one magic hour, only hers. The morning of the accident, between three and four A. M. when the streets were empty and the angels watched, she flew east on Wilshire Boulevard at eighty miles … Read more
Book Preview Hostage (2001) Crais, Robert * PROLOGUE: The man in the house was going to kill himself. When the man threw his phone into the yard, Talley knew that he had accepted his own death. After six years as a crisis negotiator with the Los Angeles Police Department’s SWAT team, Sergeant Jeff Talley knew … Read more
Book Preview Chasing Darkness (2008) Elvis Cole 11 Robert Crais PROLOGUE: BEAKMAN AND Trenchard could smell the fire it was still a mile away, but a sick desert wind carried the promise of Hell. Fire crews from around the city were converging on Laurel Canyon like red angels, as were black-and-white Adam cars, Emergency Services … Read more
Book Preview The Forgotten Man Robert Crais * The Empty House Temecula , California Late during one of those perfect twilights when the sky shimmered with copper like the last pulse of heat burning out of a body, Padilla and Bigelow turned off the highway onto a narrow residential street that brought them directly into … Read more
Book Preview * PROLOGUE: : The Church of Pike Angoon, Alaska The cold Alaskan water pulled at the fishing boats that lined the dock, the boats straining against their moorings to run free with the tide. The water here in the small harbor at Angoon, a fishing village on the western shore of Admiralty Island … Read more
Book Preview The Islander Palms Motel Uniformed LAPD Officer Joe Pike could hear the banda music even with the engine idling, the a.c. jacked to meat locker, and the two-way crackling callout codes to other units. The covey of Latina street kids clumped outside the arcade giggled at him, whispering things to each other that … Read more
Book Preview SEATTLE At two-fourteen in the morning on the night they left one life to begin their next, the rain thundered down in a raging curtain that thrummed against the house and the porch and the plain white Econoline van that the United States Marshals had brought to whisk them away. Charles said, ‘C’mere, … Read more
Book Preview * PROLOGUE: The sky above the San Fernando Valley that Saturday morning was a deep blue, washed clean of the dirt and chemical particulates that typically color L. A. air by a breeze that burbled out of the San Gabriel Mountains and over the flat valley floor and across the high ridge of … Read more
Book Preview * Semper fidelis. Chapter 1 I met Jodi Taylor and her manager for lunch on the Coast Highway in Malibu , not far from Paradise Cove and the Malibu Colony. The restaurant was perched on the rocks overlooking the ocean, and owned by a chef who had his own cooking show on public … Read more
Book Preview * Chapter 1 Jennifer Sheridan stood in the door to my office as if she were Fay Wray and I was King Kong and a bunch of black guys in sagebrush tutus were going to tie her down so that I could have my way. If s a look I’ve seen before, on … Read more
Book Preview ONE Patricia Kyle said, “Is this Elvis Cole, the world’s greatest detective? “Yes, it is.” I was lying on the leather couch across from my desk, enjoying the view that I have of the Channel Islands. I used to have chairs, but a couch is much better to relieve one of the rigors … Read more
Book Preview * Chapter 1 I was standing on my head in the middle of my office when the door opened and the best looking woman I’d seen in three weeks walked in. She stopped in the door to stare, then remembered herself and moved aside for a grim-faced man who frowned when he saw … Read more
Book Preview * Chapter 1 “I’ m sorry, Mr. Cole, this has nothing to do with you. Please excuse me.” Ellen Lang stood up out of the director’s chair across from my desk. I’d had it and it’s mate fitted in a nice pastel burgundy a year ago. The leather was broken in and soft … Read more
Book Preview Demolition Angel (2001) Robert Crais * PROLOGUE: To be disrupted: when the human body is blown apart as by the pressure force of a bomb. –GRADWOHIS LEGAL MEDICINE CODE THREE ROLL OUT–BOMB SQUAD, SILVER LAKE, CALIFORNIA CHARLIE RIGGIO STARED at the cardboard box sitting beside the Dumpster. It was a Jolly Green Giant … Read more