Private investigator Elvis Cole and his enigmatic partner Joe Pike are back on the case in this brilliant new thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Robert Crais.
RACING THE LIGHT
by Robert Crais
Putnam, November 2022
(via Aaron M. Priest Literary)
Adele Schumacher isn’t a typical worried mom. When she hires Elvis to find her missing son, a controversial podcaster named Josh Shoe, she brings a bag filled with cash, bizarre tales of government conspiracies, and a squad of professional bodyguards. Finding Josh should be simple, but Elvis quickly learns he isn’t alone in the hunt—a deadly team of mysterious strangers are determined to find Josh and his adult film star girlfriend first.
With dangerous secrets lurking behind every lead, Elvis needs his friend Joe Pike more than ever to uncover the truth about Josh, corrupt politicians, and the vicious business cartels rotting the heart of Los Angeles from within. And when Elvis’s estranged girlfriend Lucy Chenier and her son, Ben, return, he learns just how much he has to lose…if he survives.
Written with the heart, humor, and relentless suspense for which Crais is famous, RACING THE LIGHT delivers Elvis Cole’s most dangerous case yet.
Robert Crais is the author of twenty-two previous novels, eighteen of them featuring private investigator Elvis Cole and his laconic ex-cop partner, Joe Pike. Before writing his first novel, Crais spent several years writing scripts for such major television series as Hill Street Blues, Cagney & Lacey, and Miami Vice. He was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America and has received multiple awards for his work. His novels have been translated into forty-two languages and are bestsellers around the world. A native of Louisiana, he lives in Los Angeles.

Every day without fail, Travis Devine puts on a cheap suit, grabs his faux-leather briefcase, and boards the 6:20 commuter train to Manhattan, where he works as an entry-level analyst at the city’s most prestigious investment firm. In the mornings, he gazes out the train window at the lavish homes of the uberwealthy, dreaming about joining their ranks. In the evenings, he listens to the fiscal news on his phone, already preparing for the next grueling day in the cutthroat realm of finance. Then one morning Devine’s tedious routine is shattered by an anonymous email: She is dead.
As Detective Al Sullivan attempts to solve the case of murdered presidential candidate Walter Wilkinson, shot in his suite at the fabled Claremont Hotel, he finds his investigation leading back again and again to the 1930 death of 7 year-old Iris Stafford, a descendant of the Bainbridge clan, one of San Francisco’s wealthiest families. Yet the threads connecting candidate Walter Wilkinson to the long-dead girl are tangled – and the clues obscured by the turbulent crosswinds of the ongoing war, the Japanese American internment, California’s racist legacy and simmering labor unrest.
Honey
Jo Ainsley has been running for a long time. From her childhood in small town England to art school in London to the messy end of a relationship in Sydney, Jo has chosen to run again and again, each time moving further from where her troubles began.