Lullaby Town

Lullaby Town (1992) Robert Crais

The third Elvis Cole book finds Elvis searching for the ex-wife of a big-shot movie producer, because after ten years he’d decided he wants to see his son.

“Everybody in his life is there because they want to screw him. Any time there’s a woman, he’s thinking it’s because she wants to rip him off. Any time a guy says he’s Peter’s friend, it’s because he wants to be in business with Peter Alan Nelsen the big deal, not Peter Alan Nelsen, the guy. She said it as if we were just standing there, as if Peter Alan Nelsen wasn’t an outsized yolk across her shoulders.

I said, “He’s got to be getting heavy.”

She smiled softly, “I can hold him all night.”

And that is my favorite character in this book.

Again, this was published in 1992, so there are references that crack me up, but I wonder if they’d go right over the heads of anyone younger than me.

I copied her address along with her phone number and put them (phone)book back in it’s case, still complete, still immaculate. Jim Rockford would’ve ripped out the page, but Jim Rockford was an asshole.

Rockford Files re-runs came on after I got home from school, and my mom would have them running on the background while she did other things.

And to be honest, those references are really the only things that feel particularly dated. Elvis as a human being you could plop down here and he’d be just fine.

As with the other books, there is not black-and-white / good-and-evil, there are just people that Elvis deals with. Sometimes those people are good, but most of the time, they aren’t.
Rating: 8.5/10

Published by Bantam Books

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