by Robert Crais
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| List Price: | $12.99 |
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| Lowest New Price: | $112.09 |
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Product Description
Private detective Elvis Cole takes Jennifer Sheridan's case, which involves her decorated Los Angeles-cop boyfriend in some mysterious trouble, and Cole and his partner Pike are soon plunged in police corruption, gangs, and the depiction of themselves as armed killers. Reprint.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Hey Elvis! MYOB! What a disappointment., 2008-09-23
Nobody hits a homerun all the time. This author and his characters are usually so excellent they can certainly be forgiven a slip like this one. Several times I thought the lead character's ego got in the way of evidence and common sense and when one especially senseless death occurred I thought--remember Elvis they asked you to back off! Skip this one and continue on with this first rate series.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
My Favorite of the Elvis Cole Novels So Far, 2008-07-13
FREE FALL is the fourth entry in Robert Crais's "Elvis Cole" series about a private eye in Los Angeles. I'm currently reading this series in order, and this novel is the best of the four I've read.
I truly admire Crais's sharp prose style, which is remarkably clever and funny. All of his books are a pleasure to read at that level. In many ways, he reminds me of Robert Parker, whose crisp writing style is obviously a strong influence on Crais's work. I used to live in Los Angeles, and Crais's descriptions of the city are both hilarious and dead-on.
In my opinion, Crais's major weakness is his plotting style, which is often rigidly formulaic and over-the-top. For example, almost every one of Crais's books ends with a series of overblown action scenes and cartoonish confrontations that defy credibility. But in FREE FALL, Crais dials down the melodrama a bit, and produces a a more realistic story with characters that are more complex.
This novel deals with gang violence in LA, and Crais performs a solid job of exploring the consequences of such violence. While nobody would confuse this book with the work of Michael Connelly or George Pelecanos, it has a grittier, hard-edged quality that I found refreshing.
Overall, FREE FALL is another solid entry in the Elvis Cole series, and a first-rate entertainment. If you want to read a Cole novel, this is definitely a good place to start.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Robert Crais' "Free Fall", 2008-02-14
Like most fiction readers, I like to see good plots, good research by the author, and a little humor to lighten up some of the bloody action. Crais' gives you all of that along with his well developed characters Elvis Cole and Joe Pike. Good entertaining stuff.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Another winner for Robert Crais, 2007-11-22
Always get the audio books to listen to while driving. This is another winner by Robert Crais.
2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Another Three-Star Effort from Crais, 2005-10-16
It's a shame that a writer as talented as Robert Crais fell into a rut so early in his career. I'm just now reading the entire Elvis Cole series, in order, and as I finished Free Fall, the 4th book, I felt like I was reading the same ending from the previous three books. Crais just can't come up with an ending that doesn't involve our two heroes Elvis Cole and Joe Pike in the middle of some huge shoot-out with dozens of heavily-armed bad guys, miraculously managing not to get killed or even badly hurt.
There are other plot points that carry over from the other novels as well; Elvis always seems like he's going to fall in love with his female client (or the wife of his male client, or the secretary of his male client, etc) but he normally manages to pull back just at the last moment. There is also the standard moment where Elvis is in big trouble, Joe Pike is nowhere to be found and suddenly, poof, Pike shows up to save the day. Another thing that made this book somewhat annoying was the very preachy tone about racial violence and the extremely unrealistic way Crais has his characters discussing it.
All in all, Crais is too good a writer and Elvis Cole is too hilarious a character for these books to suffer from so many little problems, and yet they do. I'm hoping things get better as I move slowly through the series...
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