Robert Crais is an author who writes private detective fiction. His books feature a character named Elvis Cole. Elvis has his own agency in Los Angeles with a partner named Joe Pike. Together, they solve cases in the style of Raymond Chandler and Robert B Parker.
Mr. Crais was born in Louisiana and was adopted as an infant. His father was an oil rigger and his uncles and cousins were police officers. He attended Louisiana State University, where he studied mechanical engineering. He was raised in Louisiana, but moved to Los Angeles in 1976, where he had a lucrative career as a screen writer. He wrote for such shows as Cagney and Lacey, Quincy, Hill Street Blues, Baretta, Riker, The Twilight Zone and Miami Vice. After writing a successful miniseries, Cross of Fire, he decided to quit writing television scripts and write novels full time.
His Elvis Cole series is very successful, the stories getting deeper and the plots more complicated with each new book. Mr. Crais even gave Joe Pike a book in which he starred and Elvis Cole was the secondary character. That book is The Watcher, the next to last of the series, so far. Recently Mr. Crais has begun to write stories featuring other characters. Demolition Angel features the character Carol Starkey, a bomb squad technician. Starkey was injured in a blast that killed her partner. Another non-Cole novel is Hostage. This novel was made into a film starring Bruce Willis, and Mr. Crais wrote the script for the film.
