Robert Crais Biography
Crais is the
author of the best-selling Elvis Cole novels. 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 fifteen, which inspired his
lifelong love of writing, Los Angeles, and the literature of crime fiction.
Other literary influences include Dashiell Hammett, Ernest Hemingway, Robert B.
Parker, and John Steinbeck.
After years of amateur film-making and writing short fiction, he journeyed to
Hollywood in 1976 where he quickly found work writing scripts for such major
television series as Hill Street Blues, Cagney & Lacey, and
Miami Vice, as well as numerous series pilots and Movies-of-the-Week for the
major networks. He received an Emmy nomination for his work on Hill Street
Blues, but is most proud of his 4-hour NBC miniseries, Cross of Fire,
which the New York Times declared: "A searing and powerful documentation
of the Ku Klux Klan's rise to national prominence in the 20s."
In the mid-eighties, feeling constrained by the collaborative working
requirements of Hollywood, Crais resigned from a lucrative position as a
contract writer and television producer in order to pursue his lifelong dream of
becoming a novelist. His first efforts proved unsuccessful, but upon the death
of his father in 1985, Crais was inspired to create Elvis Cole, using elements
of his own life as the basis of the story. The resulting novel, The Monkey's
Raincoat, won the Anthony and Macavity Awards and was nominated for the
Edgar Award. It has since been selected as one of the 100 Favorite Mysteries
of the Century by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association.
Crais conceived of the novel as a stand-alone, but realized that—in Elvis
Cole—he had created an ideal and powerful character through which to comment
upon his life and times. Elvis
Cole's readership and fan base grew with each new book, then skyrocketed in 1999
upon the publication of L. A. Requiem, which was a New York Times
and Los Angeles Times bestseller and forever changed the way Crais
conceived of and structured his novels. In this new way of telling his stories,
Crais combined the classic 'first person' narrative of the American
detective novel with flashbacks, multiple story lines, multiple points-of-view,
and literary elements to better illuminate his themes. Larger and deeper in
scope, Publishers Weekly wrote of L. A. Requiem, "Crais has
stretched himself the way another Southern California writer—Ross
Macdonald—always tried to do, to write a mystery novel with a solid literary
base." Booklist added, "This is an extraordinary crime novel that should
not be pigeonholed by genre. The best books always land outside preset
boundaries. A wonderful experience."
Crais followed with his first non-series novel, Demolition Angel,
which was published in 2000 and featured former Los Angeles Police Department
Bomb Technician Carol Starkey. Starkey has since become a leading character in
the Elvis Cole series. In 2001, Crais published his second non-series novel,
Hostage, which was named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times
and was a world-wide bestseller. Additionally, the editors of Amazon.com
selected Hostage as the #1 thriller of the year. A film adaptation of
Hostage was released in 2005, starring Bruce Willis as ex-LAPD SWAT
negotiator Jeff Talley.
Elvis Cole returned in
2003 with the publication of The Last Detective, followed by the tenth
Elvis Cole novel, The Forgotten Man, in 2005. Both novels explore with
increasing depth the natures and characters of Elvis Cole and Joe Pike. RC's
third stand-alone novel, The Two Minute Rule, was published in 2006, and
was followed in 2007 by The Watchman, the first novel in the Elvis
Cole/Joe Pike series to feature Joe Pike in the title role.
The novels of Robert Crais have been published in 42 countries and are
bestsellers around the world. Robert Crais is the 2006 recipient of the Ross
Macdonald Literary Award.
He currently lives in the Santa Monica mountains with his wife,
three cats, and many thousands of books.
This biography was last updated on 08/19/2011.
A note about the biographies
We try to keep BookBrowse's biographies both up to date and accurate. However, with over 2000 lives to keep track of it's inevitable that
some won't be as current or as complete as we would like. So, please help us - if the information about a particular author is out of date,
inaccurate or simply very short, and you know of a more complete source, please let us know. Authors and those connected with authors:
If you wish to make changes to your bio, please send your complete biography as you would like it displayed so that we replace the old with the new, including your website URL if relevant.
