Sunset Express by Robert Crais

LA detective Angela Rossi might be on the fast track to become the first female chief of detectives for the LAPD, but a couple skeletons in her professional closet have slowed her climb. She and he partners are checking out a corpse found in a garbage bag in a steep ravine. Her partners can't (or won't) climb down, but Rossi does. After a quick check, the victim turns out to be the wife of the mega restauranteur Teddy Martin. When they go to his home, Angela starts sniffing around and finds a bloody hammer in the bushes.

With her history and no witnesses to Rossi at the body or where the hammer was found, superstar defense attorney Jonathan Green is all set to say that Rossi found the hammer with the body and planted it at Teddy's home. A quick solution to a major case should get Rossi back on the main line to being the head of detectives, so Green thinks Rossi has sufficient reason to plant evidence and of course, tells the media.

Green hires Elvis Cole to check out Rossi to see if there really is anything in her closet, which Cole finds is clean and tells Green as much. To justify his fee, Cole volunteers to run down leads that have come pouring into the Martin hot line, and one looks promising. Unfortunately, the lead turns out to be a ex-con with ties to one of Green's associates and before long, the ex-con ends up dead. So do the 2 guys that were implicated.

Thing start to fall apart, Cole gets fired by Green, and Elvis starts to wonder more about the Big Green Defense Machine than about Rossi. Witnesses change their story or disappear, the media is manipulated by Green's charisma, leaving Elvis, Joe Pike, and Angela to fight their way out of a maintenance shack where Green's henchmen were getting set to off another witness, but not before one of Green's associates gets shot and gives a deathbed confession to Green's role in the case. The result is that Teddy Martin flees the country to Brazil (no extradition to the US) and Green gets arrested, but all but one charge are dismissed as Green is so well insulated within his firm. They got away with it.

Typical Crais. Smart ass Cole, deadly Joe Pike, female cop in a jam, sleazy lawyers, and a briskly plotted story that easily moves along at a considerable pace. Is this great literature that tells us something about the plight of mankind? Hardly. A fun PI read? Absolutely. But I've read a bunch of Elvis Cole books recently and need a break. But, to steal an overused line: I'll be back.

East Coast Don