Book Review: A Dangerous Man by Robert Crais

Robert Crais photo by Mark Coggins from Wikimedia Common

Isabel Roland is a 22 year old bank teller. One of her somewhat regular customers is Joe Pike. One day he is her last customer before lunch. At lunch Isabel (known as Izzy) is kidnapped and Pike sees it. The average person might not notice or, if they did, would perhaps call the police. Luckily for Isabel, Joe Pike is not an average person. He is a dangerous man and he rescues her. But her troubles aren’t over because she wasn’t some random victim: The men who tried to kidnap her keep coming. And Joe Pike (and his partner Elvis Cole) keep helping her.

A Dangerous Man has that great quality of thriller novels: It grabbed me from the opening page and didn’t let me go until the end. It also had some other qualities I like in a thriller:

• The plot, while full of twists, is also straightforward: Bad guys are after Izzy. Good guys (Pike and Cole and also various law enforcement people) are trying to protect her while figuring out why people ar after her.
• The writing is clear and basic and doesn’t get in the way. I don’t want fancy language in thrillers, but I also want grammatical sentences. Crais delivers both.
• The plot keeps moving. In some forms of literature, I’m a fan of digressions. But not in thrillers.
• A clear delineation of good guys…