A review by chazmo1431
Chasing Darkness by Robert Crais

3.0

I'm not sure why, but before Chasing Darkness, I only read one other novel by Robert Crais. I read a fair amount of crime fiction and Crais is one of the better known authors in the genre so it is strange that I hadn't read anything by him.

For the most part I enjoyed the novel. I liked the Elvis Cole character and I appreciated that this PI actually does a reasonable amount of detecting. I find that a lot of the time the PI's in this type of novel tend to stumble onto the solution of a crime rather than actually solving anything.

I gather this is not the best example of the author's work (I have been meaning to read Monkey's Raincoat & LA Requiem - but haven't yet). I may not be a regular reader of the author, but even I can tell that Crais is just going through the motions here. The solution to this mystery when revealed has a pretty significant hole in its logic and there are some annoying unresolved issues that seem to have been forgotten by the author.

All in all, I found Chasing Darkness to be a quick, entertaining read. It's not great, but an enjoyable diversion. I plan to read one of his earlier novels so that I can experience Crais at his best. Even so, based on this effort and even if he is underperforming here (which I assume he is) he's still an author worth reading.