They make a chilling discovery: a dead man with a photo album in his lap. It contains photos of murder victims. This man was once a suspect in a murder case, and the woman this man was accused of killing is pictured in the album.

This causes problems for Elvis Cole. Elvis was the private detective who once proved this man, Lionel Byrd was innocent. Finding Byrd with the incriminating photo album contradicts that proof. The LAPD declares this serial killer's case is closed.

Elvis is suspicious. He cannot believe that he freed a killer to go on killing. Elvis and his sidekick, Joe Pike, set out to prove that Byrd could not have possibly killed the women pictured in the photo album.

Fans of this series waited three years for this book. Crais has been busy with other projects. His last book, 2007's "The Watchmen," was his first stand alone novel featuring Cole's sidekick, Joe Pike, as the main character. That book was huge for Crais. He told me that "my career is classic in one way ... every book since the beginning has sold better than the one before it."

"Chasing Darkness" is brilliantly plotted. Every clue gets turned inside out. I asked Crais how he goes about writing a story that twists and turns so much that his readers are hard pressed to figure out whodunnit.

He said, "I wanted this to be a book where nothing and no one was who they seemed to be. By the time we got to the end of the book I wanted everything to be upside down from where the reader thought things were at the beginning.

"Readers love to figure out ahead of the writer who did it. Then they love to throw it up in your face," he said. "'Ah, I guessed it! I saw it coming a mile away!' It's part of the fun of reading this kind of novel — unraveling the mystery.

"So I set as a task for myself in this book. I knew it would be a plot heavy book because there were so many illusions and so many lies within lies — that was what I wanted to do here. So when I was writing the book I was very conscious of that. I was very conscious that you, the reader, you're going to be trying to figure out who really did it. And therefore, I took extra care in trying to set up red herrings and misleading misdirections."

He certainly fooled me.
Posted by Vick Mickunas on 7/19/08; 4:04:47 PM
from the dept.