Take a photo of a barcode or cover
brettt 's review for:
The Wanted
by Robert Crais
First Tyson Connor started flashing much more cash and expensive material than any teenager should have. His working mother Devon didn't quite believe his stories about where it all came from but she couldn't prove him wrong. Then Tyson disappeared, so Devon has come to Elvis Cole to find her son. As Elvis digs deeper into exactly what Tyson and his friends have been doing, he learns that the kids themselves may not know what kind of trouble they have stirred up, nor who else is chasing them down. Even with his friend, the tough guy's tough guy Joe Pike along, there's no telling if Elvis can extract Tyson from the mess he's in. Or get out of it with his own skin intact.
The Wanted is the 17th novel featuring Elvis and Joe (three of the series have Joe as the POV character). Crais has been able to maintain his wit and keep Elvis in top form as a wisecracker. His penchant for Hawaiian shirts and Disney-character office accessories makes him seem deceptively lightweight until he has to pick up his end of a scuffle or bad-dude staredown. It's one of the things that's helped distinguish him from Robert B. Parker's Spenser. Pike is there to be stoic or menacing as necessary and he fills that role well; Crais doesn't make the mistake of using things we've learned about Pike from elsewhere to flesh him out of Elvis doesn't already know them.
That said, The Wanted isn't on the high end of the Cole-Pike series. For one, its pair of stalking hitmen owe more than a little to Jules and Vincent, but lack enough of the Travolta-Jackson charisma to make them amusing or interesting. For another, Tyson is a thoroughly unlikable little twerp whose friends are lightly sketched stereotypes that are even harder to like than he is.
Crais has been up and down through the course of the series, with some top-level work and some stuff that seems like setting the word processor on autopilot, so there's no reason to suspect Wanted signals a downturn. But its subpar status does make a reader a little more eager for the next volume and a little bit of redemption.
Original available here.
The Wanted is the 17th novel featuring Elvis and Joe (three of the series have Joe as the POV character). Crais has been able to maintain his wit and keep Elvis in top form as a wisecracker. His penchant for Hawaiian shirts and Disney-character office accessories makes him seem deceptively lightweight until he has to pick up his end of a scuffle or bad-dude staredown. It's one of the things that's helped distinguish him from Robert B. Parker's Spenser. Pike is there to be stoic or menacing as necessary and he fills that role well; Crais doesn't make the mistake of using things we've learned about Pike from elsewhere to flesh him out of Elvis doesn't already know them.
That said, The Wanted isn't on the high end of the Cole-Pike series. For one, its pair of stalking hitmen owe more than a little to Jules and Vincent, but lack enough of the Travolta-Jackson charisma to make them amusing or interesting. For another, Tyson is a thoroughly unlikable little twerp whose friends are lightly sketched stereotypes that are even harder to like than he is.
Crais has been up and down through the course of the series, with some top-level work and some stuff that seems like setting the word processor on autopilot, so there's no reason to suspect Wanted signals a downturn. But its subpar status does make a reader a little more eager for the next volume and a little bit of redemption.
Original available here.