This is not one of Crais' best Elvis Cole and Joe Pike novels but I stuck with it to the end. Lisa Diaz, who used to be a colleague of Cole's calls Elvis to tell him that a deceased victim died saying that he was Elvis's Cole's father, starting the long journey for Elvis, as he seeks to verify the truth of the story.
His journey also takes us back to his childhood, where he would often run away from home, in search of his father, whom he was told, worked in a circus. We also find out the John Doe is named Herbert Faustina, lived in California, and was, for some reason, calling various police stations in LA asking questions. In the quest to find out Faustina's motivation, as well as his killer, Pike finds out that Faustina and a son lived in a small California town but mysteriously disappeared just after an entire family was murdered, with the exception of an eight year old daughter. Following various leads, they discover Faustina's son, one Frederick Conrad, is a sociopath. Complicating the case even more, Cole discovers that the child who survived the mass killing was actually Lisa Diaz, the police officer who found the murder victim. Conrad realizes that Cole is out to get him, so we follow his meanderings, as he tries to track down Cole and kill him, unsuccessfully of course.
Eventually, it's made clear that Lisa killed Faustina, and later his son, for having murdered her family. Cole never does find his father but ends up at his mother's grave, the one sure thing he knows about his past,
No comments:
Post a Comment