THE SENTRY: ROBERT CRAIS

Another Joe Pike and Elvis Cole thriller, set in Los Angeles, among schemers and drug dealers. I read it along with Hilary Mantel's WOLF HALL, as a break from the density of Mantel's prose, the world of Henry VIII, a bit of fluff next to an intricate cob web.   Joe happens upon a robbery of a small diner, steps in, shoots one of the assailants, the other gets away.  The owner just happens to have a 'beautiful niece,' and Joe immediately falls for her, asks her out, tells her he will 'take care of her.'  Thus, the story begins.  Rose, the girl,  ends up not being what he thought; that she, along with the owner of the small restaurant, Rainey, were fleeing from a drug cartel from whom they had stolen millions of dollars.

Joe gets a call from her, Rose, to say she has been kidnapped by the cartel and unless her boy friend gives back the money, she will be killed.  The police and FBI are now involved but neither care nor know as much about the case as Joe Pike.  Along with Elvis, he sets up a meeting place, out smarts the killer known only as the 'executioner', but in the gun fight, both Rose and her boy friend get killed, breaking Joe's heart as well as Elvis's because he, Elvis, has to shoot her as she was about to blow Joe away and flee with the money.  Joe sure knows how to pick his women..

The narration is different in this novel as we often are let into the mind of the 'executioner,' Daniel, to see what he is thinking as he goes after his prey, in this case, Rose and Joe Pike.   The story does not end here with Daniel's death.  Joe looks for the money, knows its hidden somewhere, and after diving in a near by canal, part of Venice, he finds bags of it, which he takes home, only to find that one of the DEA guys has decided to go rogue and steal the money.  Joe, of course, blows him away, takes a sack of the money and leaves it at the door of a half way house for wayward boys, and so the novel ends, with Joe and Elvis drinking a beer on Elvis's porch, looking out over LA towards the ocean, thinking back on the past couple of weeks, on what could have been if only.