Pun Salad

[Continuing my "reread Robert Crais" project. Originally read back in 2006.]

Like many Robert Crais novels, there's a short prologue with no apparent connection with the main plot of the book: a couple of meth-fueled criminals take too much time (and have way too much fun) visiting violence on the employees and customers of the bank they're robbing. Thereby violating the rule in the title, and leading to the grisly end of their careers.

Don't worry, it eventually connects.

Max Holman is finally out of Lompoc, serving out his ten-year sentence for bank robbery. He has plans to go straight and reconnect with his biological son, and his son's mother. But it turns out that both are dead. Particularly heartbreaking: his son, a rookie LAPD cop, was murdered the night before Holman's release, one of four cops shotgunned while (allegedly) drinking beer in the concrete channel of to Los Angeles River.

Holman is unconvinced of the official story of the homicide, a simple revenge killing, open-and-shut. His questions draw considerable hostility from the detectives on the case, and it becomes apparent that they're not being totally straight with him. He teams up with a female ex-FBI agent (who happens to be living on the edge of financial ruin) to find out what's really going on.

It's a complex plot, a lot of characters, and (again, typical for Crais) a pulse-pounding page-turning climax. I seem to be saying this a lot these days: it would make an excellent FX miniseries.