Crais Hits It Big in Japan

As Jiro Kimura reports today on The Gumshoe Site, Robert Crais’ 2015 novel, The Promise, has “won the 2018 Maltese Falcon Award as the best hard-boiled/private eye novel published in the previous year in Japan. The winning Elvis Cole/Joe Pike novel also features Scott James and his K-9 partner Maggie from Suspect (2013).”

The Falcon Award is presented by Japan’s Maltese Falcon Society. A rundown of previous winners can be found here.

Crais Picks Up the Parker

Before this last weekend, writer Robert Crais was already in possession of one prize named after a distinguished crime novelist: the 2006 Ross Macdonald Award. Now he has another to decorate his shelves: the 2010 T. Jefferson Parker Mystery Award, presented to him by the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association (SCIBA) and named in honor of Parker, the author most recently of Iron River.

Crais won the commendation on Saturday for his second and latest Joe Pike novel, The First Rule (Putnam). The other two finalists for the 2010 Parker Award were Boulevard, by Stephen Jay Schwartz (Forge), and Silver Lake, by Peter Gadol (Tyrus).

You’ll find the full list of this year’s SCIBA award winners here.

(Hat tip to The Gumshoe Site.)

The Stars Come Out at Harrogate, Part V

Robert Crais submits to a grilling by our man Ali.

(Editor’s note: This is the latest installment of British correspondent Ali Karim’s report from the recent Harrogate Crime Writing Festival. Previous parts can be read here.)

So, after dropping a huge bolluck (American translation: “making a tremendous blunder”) during my post-panel session conversation with Thomas H. Cook (Master of the Delta, 2008), my son, Alex, and I headed off to the Crown Hotel bar, where Orion Publishing publicity manager Angela McMahon and author Robert Crais were waiting for us. I’d scheduled an interview with Crais even before this crime-fiction festival began.

Crais is easy to spot--he’s always the one in the colorful shirts. I’ve interviewed him several times and have followed his work religiously, ever since I read L.A. Requiem (1999), his eighth novel featuring Los Angeles private eye Elvis Cole and his “sociopathic sidekick,” Joe Pike. Crais is an erudite but modest man (which is quite remarkable, considering that he’s become world renowned for his TV writing and best-selling novels). And among the ranks of P.I. novelists, I’d classify him as one of the greatest working today.

When he saw me approaching, Crais came over right away and shoot my hand in a Joe Pike-like clasp. Then he talked to Alex for a while, as I set up my tape machine. We found a place on a stairwell where we could converse quietly, and he graciously answered my questions about his new novel, Chasing Darkness, Hollywood’s interest in his fiction, and why--despite his being a comic book fan--he’s not likely to join other crime novelists in contributing to that storytelling field.

Ali Karim: After a number of years of not coming to the UK, you seem to be frequenting our shores with some regularity. So what have you been up to in England?

Robert Crais: I’m having the time of my life as this is my first time at the Harrogate event, which, simply put, is the best. All my writer friends in the U.S.--Harlan Coben, Mike Connelly, and Lee Child--told me that the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival is the best experience they’ve had at any conference or convention, and I echo that.

AK: I must say, I was delighted with your latest novel, Chasing Darkness, and having Cole and Pike back in action after their adventures in The Watchman.

RC: Thank you very much. Coming from someone so well read, that means a lot, believe me.

AK: So, after writing a few standalone novels, do you have a plan for Cole and Pike in the near future?

RC: Next year’s book is a Joe Pike book, and then the book after that may well be a standalone. It’s an idea I’ve been toying with for some time, something I’ve been actually working on for a few years now. And then it’s back to Elvis and Joe again.

AK: The Watchman was really a Joe Pike novel, with Elvis being the sidekick, as opposed to the other way around in your earlier books. Will the next Pike book feature Elvis again?

RC: Yes. Elvis Cole’s role will be a lot larger than it was in The Watchman, but it will be set up in exactly the same way. Since writing The Watchman I can tell when I start writing, [the differences in plot that] make it a Joe Pike book as opposed to an Elvis Cole book. Pike books, by their nature, are more … how can I explain it? Well, Joe’s not an investigator, that’s not his thing, he’s more proactive …

AK: [Laughing] Proactive. That’s a nice way of putting it.

RC: Yes. Proactive is my way of saying he kick’s ass. [Laughing] That’s right, he kicks down doors and takes names. He needs stories that are not best suited for an Elvis Cole novel. But I enjoy writing Joe Pike novels; I enjoy getting inside Joe’s head and seeing the world the way he sees it. I really enjoyed writing The Watchman, and I want to do it again.

AK: I think you’ve really hit your stride in this series with Chasing Darkness. As you get more publicity, are you finding renewed interest in your older novels, because L.A. Requiem remains, for me, the definitive post-Chandler, contemporary P.I. novel currently in print.

RC: Well, thank you. And you’re right: interest in my backlist is very strong. In fact, every time a new book comes out, the sales of my backlist spike as readers explore the world of Elvis Cole and Joe Pike as well as my standalones. … [W]hen The Watchman was released, the spike was more pronounced; in fact, the sales spike was bigger than anything we’ve had before when a new book was released. Wonderfully, the same can be said for Chasing Darkness. Maybe it was as a result of the wider distribution of The Watchman; beyond that I’m not sure. The only figures I have are that the first week’s sales of Chasing Darkness, [which were] up 30 percent above that for The Watchman.

AK: My U.S. critic friend David Montgomery e-mailed me when he read Chasing Darkness, telling me that it was one of his top three reads of 2008--and I have to agree with him, after reading it myself just last month.

RC: Well, David has great taste. [Laughing] I am flattered that you and David enjoyed it.

AK: We know of course about your previous work writing for television. And it leads me to ask whether there’s anything happening as far as adapting Joe and Elvis for the small screen, or perhaps the large one.

RC: Nothing has changed here, you know. People always pursue film rights to Elvis and Joe, but the only thing new is that there’s a possibility that Demolition Angel [2000], which featured Carol Starkey, could wind up as a weekly TV series. I originally sold the film rights to Columbia TriStar, who wanted to make a film out of it, but for whatever reason they couldn’t make a go of it; but they still own the rights. They called me up a few weeks before Chasing Darkness was released and they said that they are now looking to adapt Demolition Angel as a weekly TV show. They wanted my participation and my blessing. Well, I gave them my blessing, so now we’re seeing how that progresses.

AK: As a Marvel comic-book reader from your youth, you must be aware that many writers are working on comics these days: Stephen King [The Dark Tower] Richard Morgan [The Black Widow], and David Morrell [Captain America], to name just a few. Do you have any plans of your own to write for Marvel?

RC: Well, funny you should mention that, as I have had a lot of offers from many comic-book publishers for me to write for them, but I’m not going to do it. Now, it’s not that part of me wouldn’t like to do it; but I suffer the burden of being a slow writer. I am always knocked out by these guys who can knock out a novel in four to five months. There is no way I can do that; in fact, there is no way I can take a month out of my schedule to write a four-to-six comic-book series--it would kill me. So I have had to turn down the offers.

AK: As a comic-book fan, I must admit I’m disappointed. However, your novels--especially Chasing Darkness--are so damn good, I’m glad you’ll be using your time to chronicle the lives of Elvis Cole and Joe Pike. Thank you for your time.

RC: And, hey, thanks for the kind words. Always a pleasure. Now let’s get a drink.

With that, Alex and I accompanied Crais and McMahon to the bar. We were soon joined there by some of Crais’ fellow Orion authors, Roger Jon Ellory, Chris Simms, and Steve Mosby. Over beers, what did we discuss? Crime fiction of course. Crais was very generous in telling Alex about how he’d worked with actor Bruce Willis on the 2005 film adaptation of his 2001 novel, Hostage. My son loves Willis’ Die Hard movies, so he was transfixed by the author’s recollections.

Due to our meeting with Robert Crais, we’d missed enjoying one of the annual highlights of Harrogate, the “Bloody Women” panel. However, I spotted a thick stream of people exiting from that sold-out event and heading for the book-signing room. So I sent Alex off with my copies of Chelsea Cain’s two most recent novels, Sweetheart and Heartsick, to have them autographed. Now, those books are not suitable, in my opinion, for a 15-year-old. So, as Alex told us later, when he finally arrived at the front of the signing queue, Cain, who had come over from America to participate in this festival, was a bit surprised. “My, my,” she said, “you must be an advanced reader.” To which Alex replied sheepishly, “No, I haven’t read them. They are for my dad.” Apparently, Cain smiled and winked at my son and said, “Yeah, right ...”

McMahon, Crais, and I all broke out laughing when Alex recalled this meeting with Chelsea Cain. And then Alex and I had to say our good-byes, because we were headed off to our hotel for a quick change and then a cocktail party at Harrogate’s Hotel Du Van, hosted by Quercus Publishing.

Tagging along with us on our way to the Quercus affair were Steve Mosby, Simon Kernick, Chris Simms, and Roger Ellory. And since the rest of us had consumed a rather great quantity of beer by this point, I thought it wise to hand the navigating responsibilities off to Alex. He’d surely get us to the hotel on schedule. In the meantime, I had the chance to ask Simms, who’s a terrific writer of Manchester-based police procedurals, about a scene in his 2004 book, Pecking Order. In that scene, a male character--a subnormal psychopath named Roy “Rubble” Bull--has sexual intercourse with a chicken. A fowl act, indeed. I inquired offhandedly of Simms what his mother (who I had met during the Manchester launch of Pecking Order) thought when she read that particular chapter. Simms blushed heavily and answered that his mum had ... er, skipped that part. The rest of us just roared laughing. Poor Simms explained that I was (pardon the pun) “over-egging” that scene--and besides, the chicken Rubble had had sex with was dead. Ellory screwed up his face then and said, “But that doesn’t make it any better that the chicken was dead. ... [I]n fact it makes it worse, as not only are you writing about bestiality but as the chicken is dead, you also are involving necrophilia.”

We were still laughing as we came in sight of the Hotel Du Van.

(Part VI can be found here.)

We Like Pike

It was my fellow Rap Sheet blogger Anthony Rainone who, last October, tipped us off to the forthcoming release of Robert Crais’ long-awaited Joe Pike standalone, The Watchman. He followed up recently with an excellent review of that new novel for January Magazine. Being another big, big fan of private-eye novelist Crais, and having had the chance to interview him last year over a lengthy breakfast meeting in Manchester, England, I too was very much looking forward to reading The Watchman.

I wasn’t disappointed upon finally reading the novel. It’s a remarkable thriller that for the first time puts Los Angeles P.I. Elvis Cole’s sidekick, erstwhile Marine and LAPD maverick Joe Pike--“the man with few words”--at the very hub of the action. I’ve read with alacrity Crais’ previous Cole books, including 2005’s The Forgotten Man, and wondered on occasion whether he’d ever have the audacity to put Pike center stage--and if he did, what the result would be. I need wonder no longer. Pike featured heavily in one of my favorite crime novels of all time, L.A. Requiem (1999), and I have to say that Watchman equals that earlier work as a masterpiece of modern crime fiction. Whereas Requiem used poignancy as its compelling force, Watchman uses sheer velocity. This book zips along faster than Pike’s bullets.

The tale begins with wealthy 22-year-old playgirl-socialite Larkin Connor Barkley becoming involved in a car accident in L.A., after which the three men in the Mercedes she just hit escape the scene. It turns out that one of that other car’s occupants was a South American drug-cartel money launderer and his companions were shady real-estate developers--all people under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice. Soon, Larkin’s life is threatened, and Pike is enlisted to protect the reckless heiress. But he’ll need help from the one man he can truly trust: Elvis Cole, who’s still recovering from the damage he had to endure in The Forgotten Man. Together, they’ll go about hunting the hunters, figuring out the angles (and dangers presented by) federal agents, and preventing the lovely Ms. Barkley from destroying herself.

What for me was the most interesting aspect of Watchman was the back story and insights into the enigmatic Joe Pike, especially the history of abuse he suffered at the hands of his father, the time he spent as a member of the Los Angeles Police Department, and his travels in Africa. More, I’m sure, will be revealed in future installments of this series, as Crais genuinely seems to enjoy writing about Pike. We shall see.

Last week, as The Watchman was making its debut across the UK, its author paid a short, three-day visit to Europe, meeting reviewers, booksellers, and assorted species of media folk. His British publishing house, Orion, made the man from Louisiana work hard. Crais’ two bookstore visits were at Waterstone’s in Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire, and at No Alibis in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

During that time, I was fortunate enough to again interview Crais. We talked about Pike’s starring role in The Watchman, the value of sidekicks in this genre, and the author’s relationship to his continuing characters.

Ali Karim: The most obvious question first. What made you put Joe Pike at the center of your new novel?

Robert Crais: I’ve wanted to write this book from the second or third book in the [Elvis Cole] series. Like many of the readers, I was really intrigued by Joe--this enigmatic figure--because I wanted to know what was going on behind the sunglasses. I first made an attempt at that with L.A. Requiem, and I consider that novel as the first Joe Pike book. But it wasn’t until now when I saw this particular story, thanks to this young woman who became Larkin Connor Barkley, that I had what I felt was the perfect Joe Pike story. Through her I was able to get behind the sunglasses and see the world through Joe Pike’s eyes.

AK: In The Watchman you reveal a great deal about Pike’s past. Did you learn about Pike through the writing process, or did you know his past before?

RC: It’s a mix. I’ve known the large things about Joe right from the beginning, right back to The Monkey’s Raincoat [1987]. I didn’t relay them all, but I knew them. The best I can explain it is that it’s akin to joining the dots, over the years: everything comes into focus and the dots connect and a picture forms. It’s the details I’ve learned along the journey that make me understand who Joe Pike is.

AK: Crime-fiction sidekicks such as Pike, Hawk, Dennis Lehane’s Bubba Rogowski, Harlan Coben’s Win [Windsor Horne Lockwood III], et al. have a certain appeal to readers, and morally, they often allow the hero not to be tarnished when there’s a bad guy to kill. So, what’s your take on sidekicks and their morality in crime fiction?

RC: I had a publisher back in the old days, who dubbed Joe Pike as a sociopath. I guess they did that for commercial reasons, but I resented it then and I still don’t believe it today. I think Joe Pike is a very moral guy (from his point of view), ethical, with his own code. He just sees the world differently from you and I. He’s not a slave to what we call the law, so I don’t really think of Joe doing Elvis Cole’s dirty work, I think he functions within his own code and his own universe, and there is a very rigid standard to Joe Pike’s universe, which others have to respect.

AK: Pike is never described in a lot of detail. In fact, he remains one of the most inscrutable figures in contemporary crime fiction. Were you worried when you contemplated a Pike standalone that you would have to reveal too much about the man?

RC: I didn’t worry about it, but I was aware of it. It was never my intention to pull back the curtain and reveal the wizard. From the beginning, I was confident that when you get to the end of The Watchman, you would still feel Joe as being a man of mystery, and [as] enigmatic as you did at the beginning. There is still an enormous level of complexity to him that we have yet to see. He maintains that Zen-like, enigma-like quality. I wanted to preserve that.

AK: I would say that you have some similar mannerisms and share a dress-sense with Elvis Cole. I mean, look at that awful shirt you’re wearing, and those socks! While in London, you should have visited Saville Row ...

RC: [Laughing] I’m not Elvis Cole ...

AK: [Laughing, too] Come on, every time I meet you, you’ve visited Cole’s tailor.

RC: OK, I agree the socks ... But seriously, writers cannibalize themselves and that is what fiction-writing is all about. So when I created characters like Elvis Cole and Joe Pike, I gave them little bits and pieces of myself and people I know, but most of it is fiction. Hey, Elvis Cole is tough; in a “situation,” I’m the first guy under the table. These characters are 99 percent fiction, [but they] end up being metaphors not just for me, but the readers. You imprint and overlay yourself on top of them. Joe is in many ways the most vulnerable of this duo; that’s why he’s built a fortress around himself. There’s a passage in the book where we see how Joe thinks about things and this theory about how the inside person pushes against the outside person, so who we are on the inside influences who we are on the outside--like we create a steel plate for ourselves, often for protection. So when we read about Pike, we can relate to that and we see ourselves and how our inside person influences our exterior person.

AK: Are we going to learn more about Pike’s military background and his African missions in some forthcoming book in this series?

RC: I do touch on it in The Watchman, by indication from his mercenary days. None of this will appear in next year’s book, however, which is an Elvis Cole novel. But I have a notion now for a future Joe Pike book that includes travels not only in Africa, but also Europe.

In addition to spending time one-on-one with Crais, Orion and Waterstone’s have authorized me to release--for the edification of Rap Sheet readers--a couple of short video clips from the event in Milton Keynes. The first of these (click here) details how the author came to write The Watchman, while the second (click here) shows him reading from the novel’s introductory section. (Thanks to Crimespace for hosting these clips.) On top of all that, here’s a slideshow from Crais’ appearance in Milton Keynes.

Without a doubt, The Watchman will feature in my Best of 2007 list. You wanna argue with that? Hah! Go ahead. But first, let me put on my sunglasses and call a guy I know named Joe Pike.

READ MORE: “A Q&A with Robert Crais,” by Chris High (Shots).

In Pike We Trust

Just one day after the Los Angeles Times brought us a pretty glowing profile of novelist Robert Crais, January Magazine contributing editor Anthony Rainone delivers a no less laudatory assessment of Crais’ The Watchman.

This new book finds Joe Pike, L.A. private eye Elvis Cole’s ex-marine and part-time mercenary sidekick, in the driver’s seat for once, trying to protect a spoiled, angry rich girl who’s also a federal witness against mobsters and money-launderers. The decision to shift focus from Cole, whose adventures over the years have won him acclaim and honors (including the 2006 Ross Macdonald Award), might have been a risk; but Rainone thinks it was worthwhile. “This reviewer has run out of superlatives to describe Crais’ immense talent,” he writes, “but suffice it to say that The Watchman is a turbo-charged ride that further pushes its author into the stratosphere of crime-fiction immortality.

You’ll find the full critique here.

Robert Crais: Exception and Rule

If you equate the publication of a new book by Robert Crais with crime fiction taking another bold step in the right direction, or look at it simply as the opportunity for one more bodacious reading extravaganza, then you had to smile (as I did) when you heard that Crais was awarded the 2006 Ross Macdonald Award.

That annual commendation “is given to a California writer whose work raises the standard of literary excellence.” Who better to receive it than Crais? No matter how much this author has elevated the crime novel, with both his private-eye series and standalone works; and no matter how much the fictional Elvis Cole (with help from his sidekick, Joe Pike) has advanced P.I. fiction over the years, after grabbing the baton from Lew Archer and Philip Marlowe, there is still another significant dimension in play here: the way in which the enormously talented Crais has benefited literature, as a whole. And you can make that Literature, by the way. (Don’t forget, either, that the man has written for several outstanding TV shows, including Baretta, Vega$, Quincy, M.E., Hill Street Blues, and Cagney & Lacey. And, hey, TV scripts count as part of the literary canon, according to my definition. You have a problem with that?)

Shortly after he won this Ross Macdonald Award, I contacted Crais and asked him to share with us just a few thoughts regarding his latest achievement. And, of course, I had to ask him about the upcoming Joe Pike book (The Watchman, due out in February). The results of all this are below. Dig it.

Anthony Rainone: You have received many accolades over the years for your writing. How does receiving the Ross Macdonald Award compare?

Robert Crais: Gratifying. That’s probably the best word. The Macdonald Award--the Ross Macdonald Literary Award--was established to honor Macdonald, but the selections are made without genre restrictions or requirements. Ray Bradbury was a past recipient. [So was] Mark Salzman. Cool trophy, too. Everyone who comes to the house has to genuflect.

AR: Macdonald was a big influence on you. What has his work meant to you? Do you have a favorite novel of his? Do you remember which one you read first?

RC: The Chill, on both counts. Reading the man underlined that human-ness was a fit and appropriate base for a crime novel, just as it was for any novel. Chandler and Hammett both hinted at this, but it was more in subtext. Macdonald just flopped it right out on the table. “Here it is, bro--dig or split! Interesting characters are damaged goods--now we’re going to see the how and why, and what it means.”

AR: The award is for literary excellence. How has detective fiction positively contributed to literature?

RC: We’re jazz. Particularly the P.I., the on-the-outside-looking-in investigator, the self-employed work-for-hire outlaw intruder--when I read the old books, when I step far enough back to get a historical perspective, I think these characters explore who we are as Americans, what we hope for, what we fear, what we’re willing to stand up for. What jazz is to music, detective fiction is to literature. Another color on the palette. The more colors you have, the richer you are.

AR: When you started writing P.I. fiction, I’m sure you heard it was a dying subgenre. It’s still here today, however. So, where do you see P.I. fiction heading? Are we going to be reading private-eye novels 50 years from now? And do you think Ross Macdonald will continue to be an influence?

RC: Bro, when I wrote The Monkey’s Raincoat, my own agent said I was wasting my time! Been done!! The P.I. is dead!! The white boy P.I. is so dead, he never existed!!! This shit makes me laugh. Listen, we’re talking about an iconic character here--an archetype. Nobody is writing about snap-brimmed pugs in zoot suits circa 1930. The characters change. The genre evolves. That’s the way it always has been and will be. Emerging writers will contribute their voices and ideas and experiences. Bet your ass we’ll be reading detective fiction 50 years from now.OK, I can hear you saying it--“but the publishers say they aren’t buying P.I. novels!” That’s what they were saying when I wrote Monkey. Publishing is cyclic. This, too, is something that always has been and will be true. Publishers chase heat like everyone else, but heat is a sneaky motherfucker. If a publisher reads a manuscript that knocks their socks off, they’re going to buy it. As for Macdonald’s influence--having been influential, he will always be influential, whether his work is read or not. This applies to Hammett, Chandler, and anyone else who has made contributions. Works like this: If Macdonald influenced me, and you read me, and my work influences you, then you’ve been influenced by Macdonald even without reading him. This is how Hammett and Chandler continue to influence new generations of writers. Through Robert B. Parker. Through Mike Connelly. [Harlan] Coben. Me. Academics write dissertations about this kind of thing.

AR: I know a Joe Pike book is coming out. That’s awesome. I think fans have been eagerly waiting for one. Does Elvis feature in it at all?

RC: Elvis is in it, but Joe is the star. I’m showing sides of Joe Pike I’ve never revealed--what it’s like being Pike from the inside. This is one seriously dangerous dude. We see what lurks beneath the surface. A complex man, and a cat you definitely don’t want on your case.

Hey, I don’t want Pike on my case, but I’ll be reading about him with gusto. Bring in on.

Taking on Crais

Kevin Burton Smith put together, for January Magazine, what I have long thought was one of the best interviews ever with novelist Robert Crais (The Two Minute Rule). However, Ali Karim’s new exchange with the same author, this time for Shots, is well worth reading as well. In it, Crais recalls how he was in Louisiana when Hurricane Katrina struck there last year, shares his boyhood fondness for comic books, talks about his early days of writing for television, and reveals--gasp!--that he almost killed off Joe Pike in his very first Elvis Cole book, The Monkey’s Raincoat (1987).

Read the whole interview here.