L.A. Requiem

L.A. Requiem (1999) Robert Crais

Lucy Chenier and her son Ben have moved to LA, and they soon learn that there is a great difference between a long distance relationship and being together in the same town.

Would you please move the couch again?”

I stared at the couch. I had moved it maybe eight hundred times in the last two days. “Which wall?”

She chewed at her thumb, thinking. “Over there.”

“That’s where it was two moves ago.”

It was a big couch. It probably weighed three thousand pounds.

“Yes, but that was when the entertainment center was by the fireplace. Now that we’ve put the entertainment center by the entry, the look will be completely different.”

“We?”

“Yes. We.”

I bent into the couch and dragged it to the opposite wall. Four thousand pounds.

Of course all this moving is interrupted by a call from Pike–the daughter of a friend is missing, could Elvis please come help with the search.

Thus begins and downward spiral of absolutely everything going wrong for Elvis.

I drank a can of the Falstaff while I was waiting in line, and got disapproving looks from the other shoppers. I pretended not to notice. They probably hadn’t spent the day with a young woman with a hole in her head.

I’ll note that this book explicitly mentions that Pike was in Vietnam.

This book also goes into something I noted with this series as well as with Spenser.

I found peace in the small motor activity… To cook is to heal.

This book also gives us a great deal of Joe Pike’s back story, while Elvis’ life is falling apart.

Despite all the terrible things that happen to Elvis, I think this book feels true and real. Lucy may have thought she understood what Elvis did and who he was, but she didn’t really, and I don’t think her reaction was incorrect, given who she is. It’s hard, but I think it’s true.
Rating: 8.5/10

Published by Ballantine Books

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