Robert Crais is the author of the Elvis Cole
novels, beginning with The Monkey's Raincoat
, and continuing
with his July 1 release from S&S, Chasing Darkness
, 12th in the
series. He has also written two non-series novels, Demolition
Angels
and Hostage
, and one book featuring Cole's friend, Joe Pike.
A native of Louisiana, he grew up on the banks of the Mississippi River
in a blue-collar family of oil refinery workers and police officers. He
purchased a secondhand paperback of Raymond Chandler's The Little
Sister
when he was 15, which inspired his lifelong love of writing,
Los Angeles and the literature of crime fiction. After years of amateur
filmmaking and writing short fiction, in 1976 he journeyed to Hollywood,
where he quickly found work writing scripts for such major television
series as Hill Street Blues, Cagney & Lacey
and Miami Vice
.
He received an Emmy nomination for his work on Hill Street Blues
,
but is most proud of his four-hour NBC miniseries, Cross of Fire
,
which the New York Times
called "a searing and powerful
documentation of the Ku Klux Klan's rise to national prominence in the
'20s." Crais lives in the Santa Monica mountains with his wife, three
cats and many thousands of books. Here he answers a few questions we put
to him:On your nightstand now:The
books I'm currently reading are manuscripts for possible blurbs, so I
shouldn't name them. But the books I'm looking forward to reading soon
are
Shadow Bridge by Gregory Frost,
At the City's Edge by Marcus Sakey and Neil Gaiman's
Neverwhere.
Favorite book when you were a child:
I remember the story, but not the title. Maybe a
Shelf Awareness reader can help. It's an adventure story about
three children marooned on a desert island, a la Robinson Crusoe, and
how they survive. It held amazing, adventurous factoids like "banking
the fire." These kids kept a fire going for weeks by "banking the fire"
every night. I never understood what "banking the fire" was, but it
seemed magical. I read that book again and again, and wish I recalled
the title. We're talking the early '60s. If you have any ideas what this
book might be, please write to me through my website,
robertcrais.com.
Your top five authors:
Robert Heinlein, Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Chandler, Harlan Ellison,
Mark Twain.
Book you've faked reading:
Pretty much everything assigned by my 10th grade English teacher. I got
a "D" for the year. We were supposed to read all manner of ponderous,
uninspiring tomes, but I was hiding in back of the class, reading Mailer
and Ellison and Truman Capote. I was a terrible student. I chased work
that inspired me.
Book you are an evangelist for:
I like helping newer writers, so if I find something special I spread
the word. I felt this way about Ace Atkins' book,
White Shadow,
and
The Crime Writer by Gregg Hurwitz, which held some of the
best passages about Los Angeles I've read in years. When Joseph Wambaugh
returned with
Hollywood Station, I couldn't stop talking about
it, though Wambaugh hardly needed my help.
Book you've
bought for the cover:That's easy. Paperback covers were
once painted by fabulous painters like Frank Frazetta, James Bama and
Jim Steranko. I used to collect those guys. I bought anything with a
Frazetta cover. Didn't matter what the book was--I bought it for
Frazetta's art.
Book that changed your life:
Harlan Ellison's book of essays,
The Glass Teat, which
chronicles his views about the television industry. Here I was, this
totally out-of-the-loop kid in Louisiana, with no real belief or
expectation that someone like me could be a writer--"writing" was
something larger-than-life people did, like becoming astronauts or
actors or president. But
The Glass Teat demystified the working
world of television, and convinced me that if "they" could be a writer,
I could be a writer. So I came out to Hollywood and did it. Every good
thing in my life began when I moved to Los Angeles.
The Glass Teat,
like any meaningful book, opened the door to possibilities.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
The Old Man and the Sea. I've read it several times, and each time
it leaves me awed.
