From page one of The Monkey’s Raincoat, Robert Crais has shown us Elvis Cole’s connection to the character of Pinocchio, best known from the eponymous 1940 Disney animated film. On the wall of Elvis’ office hangs a Pinocchio clock with eyes that swing back and forth as the clock ticks, and he’s proud of it. Through each successive novel we see many people come through the office and find Elvis’ choice of decor odd, and they’re often people who end up not understanding Elvis as a whole. He also keeps a figure of Jiminy Cricket on his desk–where he can always look at it, as though looking for inspiration, a conscience he doesn’t even need to whistle for. At first, I only read the Pinocchio interest as a quirk, not a trait stemming from a deep place in his heart and past. As I continued to read through the series, thinking more about Elvis’ hurts and motives, I began to realize exactly why that beloved Italian puppet meant so much to him. The story of Pinocchio is that of a wooden puppet,...
As followers of my Twitter know, I’ve been reading and tweeting about the Elvis Cole novels (plus others by Robert Crais) for some time now. I used to blow threw them, devouring and spitting out my opinions on the nitty-gritty details and the context and tone of scenes almost as fast as I could post. Lately, things have slowed down. Much of that is the demands of life — I work a non-clinical support job for the primary care side of a large medical group, and you might have heard that things are a bit busy in the healthcare field right now. I also feel as though partway through The Last Detective I happened to bite into something massive, and I’ve been taking my time to closely read and then digest what’s in front of me, because it’s an idea much larger than any I’ve tried to share before and I want to make sure I still do it right. So, it’s been a few months since I made any meaningful content, but I return to you with this: a stupid number of words in a for-fun essay analyzing wh...