VJ Books Features Robert Crais!

Robert Crais is the author of the best-selling Elvis Cole novels. A native of Louisiana, he grew up on the banks of the Mississippi River in a blue collar family of oil refinery workers and police officers. He purchased a secondhand paperback of Raymond Chandler’s The Little Sister when he was fifteen, which inspired his lifelong love of writing, Los Angeles, and the literature of crime fiction. Other literary influences include Dashiell Hammett, Ernest Hemingway, Robert B. Parker, and John Steinbeck.

After years of amateur film-making and writing short fiction, he journeyed to Hollywood in 1976 where he quickly found work writing scripts for such major television series as Hill Street Blues, Cagney & Lacey, and Miami Vice, as well as numerous series pilots and Movies-of-the-Week for the major networks. He received an Emmy nomination for his work on Hill Street Blues, but is most proud of his 4-hour NBC miniseries, Cross of Fire, which the New York Times declared: "A searing and powerful documentation of the Ku Klux Klan’s rise to national prominence in the 20s."

In the mid-eighties, feeling constrained by the collaborative working requirements of Hollywood, Crais resigned from a lucrative position as a contract writer and television producer in order to pursue his lifelong dream of becoming a novelist. His first efforts proved unsuccessful, but upon the death of his father in 1985, Crais was inspired to create Elvis Cole, using elements of his own life as the basis of the story. The resulting novel, The Monkey’s Raincoat, won the Anthony and Macavity Awards and was nominated for the Edgar Award. It has since been selected as one of the 100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association.

Taken Signed First Edition

The First Rule Signed First Edition

Sunset Express Signed First Edition

Hostage Signed First Edition

Two Minute Rule Signed First Edition

The Sentry Signed First Edition

To see Robert Crais' bibliography, click here or scroll to the bottom of the page.

Robert Crais Bibliography

Elvis Cole Series

1.     The Monkey's Raincoat (1987)

2.     Stalking the Angel (1988)

3.     Lullaby Town (1992)

4.     Free Fall (1993)

5.     Voodoo River (1995)

6.     Sunset Express (1996)

7.     Indigo Slam (1997)

8.     L. A. Requiem (1999)

9.     The Last Detective (2003)

10.  The Forgotten Man (2005)

11.  Chasing Darkness (2008)

12.  The Sentry (2011)

13.  Taken (2012)

Joe Pike Series

1. The Watchman (2007)

2. The First Rule (2010)

3. The Sentry (2011)

Other Novels

·         Demolition Angel (2000)

·         Hostage (2001)

·         The Two Minute Rule (2006)

Omnibus

·         Three Great Novels: The Early Years (2001)

·         Three Great Novels 2 (2002)

·         Three Great Novels 3 (2005)

·         Three Great Novels 4 (2010)

Short stories

·         Weigh Station (1982)

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