The Elvis Cole and Joe Pike Series by Robert Crais

In this debut novel, Elvis Cole is approached by a woman named Ellen Lang who is at her wit's end–her husband and son have disappeared, and she needs help finding them. Elvis and his partner Joe agree–it seems like an easy enough case. But as their investigation takes them to the seedier side of Hollywood, the danger increases, pitting them against a crime boss who is not afraid to kill to get what he wants.

When a man and a woman walk into Elvis's office, they present him with a very pressing case: a rare Japanese manuscript has gone missing from the man's safe. It was on loan from some of his Japanese business associates, so he is understandably very anxious to get it back, and quietly. Elvis and Joe are on the case, heading to Little Tokyo where their questions lead them straight to a showdown with the yakuza.

Peter Alan Nelsen is Hollywood's hottest new director–young, successful, and rich. He seems to have everything, but that's not quite true, which is why he hires Elvis to find the wife and baby that he left when he dropped out of film school and headed to Hollywood. Elvis thinks it'll be an easy enough case, except when he finds Nelsen's family in Connecticut, it turns out his estranged wife has some nasty mob connections that could get them all in deep trouble.

When a woman hires Elvis and Joe to look into her cop fiancé and discover just how much trouble he is in, they agree–and find themselves with targets on their backs. Their investigation uncovers the dangerous, fragile relationship between gangs and police, and how police brutality and cover-ups are just a part of everyday life in LA's south side. Before long, Elvis and Joe are being framed as killers, and have to work fast to clear their names and close their case.

TV actress Jodie Taylor hires Elvis to discover the identity of her biological parents, so he heads to Louisiana, where Taylor was given up for adoption over thirty years ago. But his case turns out to be much more than searching through dry old records–someone else also wants to find Jodie's biological parents, and they've been murdered for it. Elvis better watch his step.

Restauranteur Teddy Martin's wife is brutally murdered and first person the police look to is the husband. But Martin is not going down without a fight, and so he hires Elvis and Joe to investigate the police, resolute in his belief that he's being framed. Elvis and Joe discover that the lead detective on the case, Angela Rossi, certainly has reason to need a slam-dunk case, but the more they look into things, the more they suspect that the police are the ones being set up...

A trio of kids walks into Elvis Cole's office, and they have a simple request: find their father, who has been missing for eleven days. They have good reasons for not going to the police, and one of those reasons is why the family had to flee from Seattle three years earlier in a hail of bullets. Now as Elvis and Joe dig deeper into the case, they find themselves walking straight into a web of corruption that's being investigated at the federal level.

For once, unfortunately, a case hits close to home for Elvis. His ex-girlfriend, Karen Garcia, has been brutally murdered. There is no immediate suspect, and her grieving father wants to hire Elvis to monitor the LAPD's investigation into her murder. For Elvis and Joe, this is not just another case, and they know all too well how police can bungle cases...but they're totally unprepared for the conspiracy the LAPD will uncover, one that will threaten their partnership, and their friendship.

Elvis's personal life takes a gigantic hit when he agrees to watch his girlfriend's ten-year-old son Ben while she's out of town on business...and the kid vanishes. When the kidnappers call, it's not with a ransom request, but a threat: They're going to make Elvis pay. As Elvis pushes to find Ben before the police and before he comes to harm, Joe is harboring secret knowledge about the case that could spell disaster for everyone.

In a darkened LA alley, an elderly man dies of a gunshot wound, clutching a file folder of newspaper clippings. Police are unable to save him, and they don't know who killed him...but they learned enough to know that the man claims to be Elvis Cole's long-lost father. Now, his death creates big problems for Cole, trying to lay low. But try as he might, he is sucked into the investigation of his father's death, for better or worse.

Joe Pike takes center stage in this installment. Larkin is a rich party girl who inadvertently witnesses a crime that's being investigated by the Feds...and involves some very dangerous, very powerful people who will stop at nothing to silence her. When federal protection can't keep Larkin safe, her family hires Joe. Joe decides to go off-grid with Larkin, and decides that the best defense? It's a good offense.

When a shocking discovery of a suicide victim throws doubt on a case that Elvis Cole worked years earlier, Elvis and Joe find themselves second-guessing everything. Elvis was once hired to find evidence that a man accused of rape and murder was innocent, and while Elvis was successful, new evidence suggests that the man was in fact guilty and, even worse, went on to hurt more women. Elvis is wracked by guilt but determined to get things right this time around.

When Joe Pike's friend Frank and his family are brutally executed in a home invasion, the police zero in on Frank, uncovering every detail of his life and exploring his secret life, which he shielded from his family. Joe is determined to prove that his friend is innocent and preserve his reputation, so he and Elvis begin looking into the case, and soon uncover evidence of a terrible past crime.

Joe happens to be at the right place at the right time when he saves the owner of an LA diner from a shakedown by gang members. You'd think he and his niece, Dru, would be gracious but they're resentful. Nonetheless, as Joe becomes taken with Dru, it becomes apparent that the diner owners are not at all what they seem...and they may be setting a trap for Joe and Elvis.

When a woman approaches Elvis and Joe and asks them for help finding her daughter and her daughter's boyfriend, she's sure that they'll discover her daughter is pulling an elaborate and cruel prank for money. But this is a real abduction–they've been taken by human traffickers who are as heartless as they are efficient. Elvis and Joe investigate, but when Elvis is taken, Joe is left alone to find his friends and solve the case before it's too late.

Missing women are a common enough occurrence in Elvis's everyday life that his latest case doesn't seem all that interesting until he discovers that the woman he's tasked with finding is an explosives expert working for a defense contractor. When an LAPD K-9 officer and his dog stumble upon a house full of explosives and one dead body, Elvis and the LAPD find their cases colliding dangerously.

When a desperate single mom asks Elvis to investigate her son's sudden cashflow, Elvis thinks he'll bust the kid for selling drugs. Not so. He is part of a group that has been burglarizing fancy homes, and when they steal from the wrong man, the kid disappears. Elvis and Joe must track these contract criminals in order to recover their client's son before he receives the ultimate punishment.