The Forgotten Man / Robert Crais
It’s a nice continuation of the Elvis Cole series. The main mystery is kind of boring, frankly, but the scenes of Cole as a child are interesting. The problem with the structure of the Cole books – and the Myron Bolitar series has a similar problem – is that the secondary characters are somewhat more interesting than the main one.

The last Crais went into the background of Joe Pike, the Killer Pal of Cole. Bolitar has a Killer Pal, too. Hell, so does Easy Rawlins from the Walter Mosely books. As I think about it, they all serve similar purposes: they are perfectly willing to be more violent than the main character, as if the main character will lose sympathy without that. As Mike Hammer or Joe Reacher show, the main character can be a borderline sociopath and still be compelling to readers.

This is a different structure from, say, Spenser and Hawk. Spenser is just as violent as hawk, but with a different set of rules. There’s a comparison, but it’s not because Robert Parker is unwilling to have Spenser do dubious and violent things.

In any case, it’s certainly as entertaining as an hour of TV.