LOS ANGELES –
First, you have to know about Joe Pike.
Pike lives in Los Angeles. He wears a cutoff sweat shirt, jeans
and sunglasses – summer and winter, rain or shine, day or night.
Always, his red Jeep Cherokee is spotless and gleaming. He has a red
arrow tattooed on the shredded deltoids of each shoulder. He's
ex-LAPD and an expert on weaponry large, medium and small. He will
speak when necessary, but he prefers silence.
K.C. ALFRED /
Union-Tribune
Mystery writer Robert Crais set much of the
action in "The Watchman" near downtown
L.A. |
He is a sleek master of Zen
violence, and he may yet turn out to be novelist Robert Crais'
greatest creation. That would surprise Crais' fans as well as Pike's
partner Elvis Cole, if Elvis were hip to the fact – and Elvis is hip
to pretty much everything – that he and Pike are fictional.
Elvis is the main character, as it happens, in Crais' offbeat,
highly acclaimed series of L.A. crime novels; the latest, “The
Watchman,” came out just a few weeks ago. He's a wisecracking PI
whose headquarters on Santa Monica Boulevard includes an empty room
– Pike's office. When clients don't like Elvis' 'tude and demand to
deal with his partner instead, he sends them in to see Pike, who's
never there.
“That Elvis,” as Elvis would say.
For the first handful of Elvis Cole novels, beginning with “The
Monkey's Raincoat” in 1987, Joe Pike was seen only in searing
flashes, a deadly presence Elvis would summon to do the heavy
corpse-lifting.
“I don't use him too much,” Crais said in a 1996 interview with
the Union-Tribune. “I recognize the value of that. He's very
enigmatic, mysterious – a force of nature, and nature has to have
its secrets. Were I to say too much, he'd be less intriguing. ...
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In the
opening pages of “The Watchman,” after a narrow escape,
Pike and Larkin are setting themselves up in a safe
house. He is pleased to see a pit bull in the back yard,
but –
The pit exploded with barking as it jumped against
its chain.
Pike spoke fast over his shoulder even as the first
man came around the end of the garage. It was happening
again.
“Front of the house, but don't open the door. Go.
Fast.”
The towel fell from her head as he pushed her
forward. He hooked their duffels over his shoulder,
guiding her to the door. He checked the slit in the
front window shade. A single man was walking up the
drive as another moved toward the house. Pike didn't
know how many more were outside or where they were, but
he and the girl would not survive if he fought from
within the house.
He cupped her face and forced her to see him. She had
to see past her fear. Her eyes met his and he knew they
were together.
“Watch me. Don't look at them or anything else. Watch
me until I motion for you, then run for the car as fast
as you can.”
Once more, he did not hesitate.
He jerked open the door, set up fast on the man in
the drive, and fired the Colt twice. He reset on the man
coming across the yard. Pike doubled on each man's
center of mass so quickly the four shots sounded like
two – baboombaboom – then he ran to the center of the
front yard. He saw no more men, so he waved to the girl.
“Go.”
She ran as hard as she could, he had to hand it to
her. Pike fell in behind her, backward the way
cornerbacks fade to cover a receiver, staying close to
shield her body with his because the pit bull was still
barking. More men were coming.
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“It's
important to know what not to write.”
At least, what not to write then. Over the years and 11 Elvis
Cole novels, Cole, Pike and Crais have matured together. Elvis'
wisecracking has tapered off, we've gradually learned more about
Pike – we now know, for example, why he was kicked off the force and
why every cop in the LAPD hates him – and Crais' themes have grown
deeper and more profound.
So it's not all fun and bloodletting. For all the schlock in the
mystery genre – and there's plenty – serious literary attention has
been paid for three-quarters of a century.
Dashiell Hammett, then Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain dragged
the bloodless little English murder mystery across the ocean,
roughed it up and threw it in the gutter, where – in a famous essay
called “The Simple Art of Murder” – Chandler said it belonged.
They and the more talented among their descendants – among them
Ross Macdonald, Elmore Leonard, Michael Cunningham, T. Jefferson
Parker and Crais – made it an American art form. Hammett's work,
Dorothy Parker wrote, was “as American as a sawed-off shotgun.”
(Curiously, the very best of the contemporary British mysteries,
which tend to be tense, chilling psychodramas, are by women: P.D.
James and Ruth Rendell.)
And in recent years, as the Washington Post's mystery reviewer
Patrick Anderson notes in his new book “The Triumph of the Thriller:
How Cops, Crooks, and Cannibals Captured Popular Fiction” (Random
House), mysteries – broadly defined – have come to dominate the
best-seller lists. Take a look this week, or any any week. James
Patterson (see “schlock,” above) writes four books a year, for
example, that now have initial print runs in excess of a million. A
few years ago Patricia Cornwell signed a multi-book deal for around
$25 million.
But quality stuff moves, too, and Crais, though not in the
upper-upper tier in sales, does well – while getting the respect he
deserves. Reviews are generally glowing, sometimes ecstatic; in
“Triumph,” Anderson writes that “The Last Detective,” Crais' ninth
novel, “builds to a remarkable ten-page showdown between two sets of
killers, a stunningly choreographed ballet of violence.”
“I take that part of the
writing very seriously,” Crais said in a recent interview near the
rank Los Angeles river – hard by downtown L.A. – where some of the
action in “The Watchman” takes place. “Every real-life story I've
ever heard, that's what they all say: You don't know what's
happening even as it's happening. If I were to film it, it'd be
quick cuts, pop pop pop, shadows.”
Crais has no doubt heard a lot of these real-life stories: Four
generations of his family have been police officers in Louisiana. A
year and a half ago his cousin was killed in an arrest attempt.
“These were experienced detectives,” he said. “They'd done this many
times. They went through the door and the guy was just standing
there with a gun, and started firing.”
“The Watchman” (Simon & Schuster, $25.95), sports a new, tag:
“A Joe Pike Novel.”
“I found I couldn't resist him any more,” Crais said. “I know
he's perceived as a sidekick, but I always perceived them as
co-equals.
“When I started getting deeper into the characters, I wanted to
reveal more texture, to see the world through Pike's eyes. The need
grew in me to see what drove this guy. I wanted to get at the core
of his loneliness.”
On the surface, “The Watchman” is simple enough: Protect the
girl.
An old acquaintance has called in a favor, and Joe Pike spends
most of 292 pages blasting around L.A. with a snotty young rich girl
named Larkin Blakley in his charge, nameless men on their tail
trying to kill her. As always with Pike, his job is a matter of
honor. But this time something else is going on.
“One of the ongoing themes in the books,” Crais said, “is that
people are so much more than they seem. We make snap judgments, and
almost invariably we're wrong. Look at Joe Pike: There's a reason
he's so internalized that he's monosyllabic. Larkin is a
scatterbrained heiress, but she's a real live human being, too. She
wakes up to Pike, and it's only then that they can relate to each
other. ...
“I like crime novels and crime fiction, but cop stuff is not the
reason I write these books. What drives me are the human moments –
like the revelations about Joe Pike's loneliness.”
Which is not to say that “The Watchman” isn't at the same time
flat-out, rip-roaring, pedal-to-the-sizzling-metal, red-lining
action adventure. Crais filed his teeth writing for TV shows like
“Hill Street Blues” and “Miami Vice,” so he knows how to craft a
scene that'll make the hairs on the back of your neck lie down and
look for cover.
“The Watchman” would seem a natural for some screen, big or
plasma, but Crais says there's no chance it, or any other of his
Cole/Pike novels, will be filmed. For 20 years, TV and movie people
have approached him, very big bucks in hand. No deal, he insists. No
deal ever.
“My father was right,” he said. “I am insane. A stand-alone
(novel), sure, I'll take their money. But Elvis and Joe exist for me
and my readers. I have no wish to have Hollywood improve on my
creations.”
Crais isn't completely nuts; he did, in fact, sell the rights to
“Hostage,” a non-Elvis novel.
“Bruce Willis is Tally (in 'Hostage'),” he said. “That's fine.
But what is precious to me about books is that it's a collaborative
medium. Whoever reads 'The Watchman' is going to envision Joe Pike,
is going to contribute. I like to reach out to all those human
beings. Once there's that actor up there, I'm worried that the
collaboration with readers will be forever damaged.”
Crais tapped a forefinger to his temple. “It's all about the
theater that happens here.”
Arthur Salm: (619) 293-1321;
arthursalm@uniontrib.com
