Synopses & Reviews
Los Angeles, 3:58 a.m.: Elvis Cole receives the phone call he's been waiting for since childhood. Responding to a gunshot, the LAPD has found an injured man in an alleyway. He has told the officer on the scene that he is looking for his son, Elvis Cole. Minutes later, the man is dead.Haunted throughout his life by a lack of knowledge about his father, Elvis turns to the one person who can help him navigate the minefield of his past ? his longtime partner and confidant, Joe Pike. Together with hard-edged LAPD detective, Carol Starkey, they launch a feverish search for the dead man's identity ? even as Elvis struggles between wanting to believe he's found his father at last, and allowing his suspicions to hold him back. With each long-buried clue they unearth, a frightening picture begins to emerge about who the dead man might have been, and the terrible secret he's been guarding.At the same time, Elvis has no way of knowing he has awakened a sleeping monster. The further he goes in his investigation, the closer he draws to a merciless killer who is violently connected to the unidentified man's past. This psychopath believes Cole is hunting him, and he goes on the attack to find Elvis before Elvis can find him.
Synopsis
" A] riveting novel with a vivid sense of place . . . Anyone who enjoys a well-written, fast-paced, noirish thriller with a great aha moment shouldn't miss The Forgotten Man."--The Boston Globe
In an alleyway in Los Angeles, an old man, clutching faded newspaper clippings and gasping his last words to a cop, lies dying of a gunshot wound. The victim claims to be P.I. Elvis Cole's long-lost father--a stranger who has always haunted his son.
As a teenager, Cole searched desperately for his father. As a man, he faces the frightening possibility that this murder victim was himself a killer. Caught in limbo between a broken love affair and way too much publicity over his last case, Cole at first resists getting involved with this new case. Then it consumes him. Now a stranger's terrifying secrets--and a hunt for his killer--give Cole a frightening glimpse into his own past. And he can't tell if it's forgiveness or a bullet that's coming next. . . .
"Robert Crais is a crime writer of incredible talent--his novels are not only suspenseful and deeply atmospheric but very hard to put down."--Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code
"A brutal but exhilarating climax."--USA Today