It’s been a while since I read Crais, and after finishing this fast and gripping read, I’m not sure how I could have stayed away for so long. A family is murdered in a house in Temecula, California. A mother, father, and 12-year-old boy are all beaten to death with a baseball bat. Once police are on the scene, they discover a 4-year-old girl who the killer probably didn’t know was in the house. Her footprints, tracked in the blood of her family, indicate she had walked around all three bodies before she went back to her room, where she was found by the police, totally mute. Its many years later that another body is discovered in an alley in Los Angeles, a man who died claiming that he was the father of Elvis Cole, the World’s Greatest Detective, at least according to local publications. Elvis never knew his father, and all he did know was what his mother fabricated, that his father had been a human cannonball in the circus. It was his adolescent intense search for his father, which was unsuccessful, that led Elvis’ to the life as a private detective. Now, he has the chance to find out who this man is and why he claimed to be his father. Could that be true? The path takes us through some very crazy people, but we also have contact with some familiar figures: Carol Starkey, formerly of the Bomb Squad, who is desperately in love with Cole; Lucy Chernier, Cole’s real love who fled the LA scene because of the danger that came from living with Cole; and of course, Joe Pike, who makes his boldest of entries, at precisely the right time. In the story, Crais takes us all over So Cal, from San Diego, to Temecula, through Los Angeles, and up to Canyon Country, north of LA. It is Crais and Cole at their best. Good book.
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