Elvis Cole and Joe Pike Mystery Series by Robert Crais
Relax & read - mystery list descriptions do not reveal major plot points.

Character's Personality: Elvis is extroverted, talkative, emotional, and partial to wise-cracks.  Joe is the strong, silent type with a good heart.

Character's Occupation: Elvis and Joe are partners in a private investigators business.  Joe is also a mercenary and owns a gun shop.

Character's Culture / Ethnicity: Unspecified white people

Character - Other Notable Traits: Both are Vietnam veterans. Elvis served with the Army, and Joe with the Marines (Force Recon).

Location and Time Period: Contemporary Los Angeles, California

Mystery Subgenre: Private investigator

Objectionable Material: Profanity, medium violence

Series Description: (brought to you by kat impatientreader.com) Elvis Cole is a private investigator in Los Angeles. He's a wise-cracking, talkative guy who is unlucky in love, and who likes to wear loud Hawaiian-print shirts. He thinks of himself, self-mockingly, as the World's Greatest Detective. He owns a feral male cat who doesn't appear to have a name, and who doesn't like many other people. He also has various friends in the Los Angeles Police Department with whom he can network and get valuable information about forensics and past police cases. He had a troubled childhood, complicated by a missing father and a crazy mother. He is also a Vietnam veteran.

Joe Pike is Elvis Cole's enigmatic partner in the detective agency. Joe wears sunglasses all the time, and has arrows tattooed on his deltoids because he's a forward-oriented kind of guy. He rarely talks and provides the "intimidation factor" that Elvis sometimes needs when dealing with criminals. Joe survived an abusive childhood, and a short career in the LAPD which ended when he shot his partner for reasons that you can read about in L.A. Requiem. Needless to say, most of the LAPD now refuse to work with Joe. Joe has also served in the U.S. Marine Corps and worked as a mercenary. He owns a gun-shop, which he uses as a base of operations from which to send forth his loyal employees on mysterious missions. The Elvis Cole series is fast-moving, and holds a "noir"-ish edge, set as it is in the strange, sun-drenched landscape of Los Angeles.

Series List: Purple Copyright Date  = I've read it. Title links go to Amazon.com product pages.

1. The Monkey's Raincoat (1987). Elvis and Joe search for a woman's missing husband and son.
2. Stalking the Angel (1988). Elvis must recover a rare Japanese manuscript, and save a teenaged girl captured by Japanese gangsters.
3. Lullaby Town (1992). Elvis tracks down a film-maker's missing wife in Connecticut, and then must help her get free from a web of organized crime.
4. Free Fall (1993). Elvis and Joe are hired by a woman who believes her fiancé, an LAPD cop, is involved in illegal activities.
5. Voodoo River (1995). An actress hires Elvis to track down her biological parents in Louisiana.
6. Sunset Express (1996). A high-powered lawyer hires Elvis to join the defense team of a wealthy client accused of murdering his wife.
7. Indigo Slam (1997). Three abandoned kids hire Elvis to find their father, a counterfeiter on the run from the Russian mob.
8. L.A. Requiem (1999) – Dilys Award.  When the daughter of a businessman is murdered, the LAPD uncovers a pattern of serial-killings, and Joe Pike looks like the main suspect.  Complex and entertaining.
9. The Last Detective (2003). Elvis and Joe must find the kidnapped son of Elvis's love-interest Lucy.
10. The Forgotten Man (2005). Elvis must unravel the mystery of why a gunshot victim claimed to be his missing father.
11. The Watchman (2007). Joe Pike takes on the hazardous mission of protecting a complicated rich girl targeted for assassination. A good read.
12. Chasing Darkness (2008). Police find the body of a man who committed suicide and identify him as a former suspect in the serial killings of several women.  Three years ago, Elvis Cole's investigative work cleared the man's name, but now it looks like he was the killer and went on to kill again. Elvis Cole and Joe Pike must investigate to clear their names.

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