Monday, April 13, 2009 By: Suzanne

Audio: The Forgotten Man by Robert Crais


YAYYYYY!!!!! A book that I have nothing bad to say something about! From the back of the box:

Los Angeles, 3:58 a.m.: Elvis Cole receives the phone call he's been waiting for since childhood. Responding to a gunshot, the LAPD has found an injured man in an alleyway. He has told the officer on the scene that he is looking for his son, Elvis Cole. Minutes later, the man is shot dead.

Haunted throughout his life by a lack of knowledge about his father, Elvis turns to the one person who can help him navigate the minefield of his past - his longtime partner and confidant, Joe Pike. Together with hard-edged LAPD detective, Carol Starkey, they launch a feverish search for the dead man's identity - even as Elvis struggles between wanting to believe he's found his father at last, and allowing his suspicions hold him back. With each long buried clue they unearth, a frightening picture begins to emerge about who the dead man might have been, and the terrible secret he's been guarding.


If I had to come up with a "problem" to talk about with this book, it would be to say that it's a little predictable but only because the story in the prologue seems to have nothing to do with the rest of the book. When I stopped to ask why, I figured out the mystery of the book.

What I loved most about this book was that Crais was able to give a unique voice to each character. It probably has something to do with James Daniels (the reader on the audio book) but I think Daniels was able to read each character this way because of the material Crais gave to work with. At one point in the story, Carol Starkey makes a phone call to Elvis Cole. I won't tell you what was said because that will give away an important part of the story, but I was impressed with how Crais wrote Starkey's lines in her own unique voice while still writing from Cole's point of view. The exchange was also a perfect example of the miscommunication between a man and a woman that showed both sides. I thought to myself, "How can this man know how to write a woman so well?"

Speaking of unique voices, I must also mention that Daniels is fairly talented at voices. I loved the different voices he used to each character, especially Joe Pike. He sounded like a cross between Kris Kristofferson and Clint Eastwood.

Like I said, I predicted the end of the book but this did not stop me from enjoying the book any. I highly recommend this book.

3 comments:

Ruthanne said...

You're funny! I had to chuckle at the "nothing bad to say" statement. ;D

Hope you had a great weekend.

Suzanne said...

Thanks! I had a wonderful weekend of spending a lot of time sitting around doing nothing!

Libertine said...

This sounds really good. I'm on my way to a bookshop :-) Need a bit of mystery...

Followers