New York Times Best Selling Author

There are two other types of crime stories I know and enjoy: those I  review and share and those I have enjoyed and subjected to a Story Grid analysis. Today I’m writing about one of the latter – LA requiem by Robert Crais. I don’t know whether you’ve heard of the book or the author, but Crais has written a private investigator series with his main character Elvis Cole and his sidekick Joe Pike. This story is the 8th in that series.

Shawn Coyne, the person who trained me in Story Grid editing, and accepted my own story Home Truths for publication (Story Grid Publishing), helped Crais achieve what is known in writing circles as his ‘Breakout Novel.’ With LA requiem Crais made the New York Times Best Seller List. So, when Coyne told me this, I was naturally curious to see how Crais did it.

I suspect the last thing you want to know is how he did it! That simply knowing he wrote a great book and why it’s great, is probably enough. So, what can you expect?

This is a ‘Noir - hard-boiled’ subgenre of crime where (with every crime story) the external value at stake is justice or injustice. One of the things that kicked Crais into stardom with LA Requiem is he wrote a parallel internal genre for his characters, a morality story where the value at stake was sacrifice. So straight away, that tells you that there will be wins and losses for the good guys and involves a lot more than baddie commits crime, goodie pursues baddie but has setbacks, goodie catches baddie and justice is done.

Crais uses a number of points of view to tell the story in 3rd person but also in a style where we’re never in doubt about what the characters are thinking, either in relation to their intentions or their actions. No spoilers here, but I will say, Elvis is on the hunt for a serial killer and the story’s main inciting incident is that a woman, Karen Garcia, is no longer missing but the victim of a murder. As it turns out, not the first victim. It gets difficult quickly because Elvis and Joe Pike have been hired by Karen’s father Frank, a man of considerable political and other influence. So, when the cops (one of whom is a well-drawn antagonist called Harvey Krantz, nicknamed Pants) makes it clear his team will take over the investigation, the story is set for conflict at multiple levels.

Elvis is forced to make several critical-choice decisions where there is no obvious answer for him and that always adds great interest and underpins the old adage that it’s not what a character says that’s important, but what they actually do. In some ways this story reflects a microcosm of life without being preachy. After Elvis’s partner Lucy and her son uproot their lives to come and live with Elvis, but in the second half of the story, it looks like their relationship has suffered a fatal blow. One of those tough decisions Elvis has to make.

One reader on Goodreads said, ‘the real achievement of this book is that Crais decided it was time to quit playing off how much of a mysterious badass Joe Pike is and finally let the reader get several long, hard looks behind those shades Pike's always wearing. Even though the novel is narrated (mostly) by series lead Elvis Cole, this book is as much Pike's as it is his.’

I thought LA Requiem was an emotionally driven, fast-paced whodunit that beautifully captured the vibrancy of LA and the dark gritty vibes of crime stories. It was a pleasure to analyze for my recertification as an editor and I highly recommend it to you as a crime read.

Drop me a note if you’d like to see how a story is forensically analyzed and I’ll show you the spreadsheet for LA Requiem.

Until next time.