The Promise

Publishers Weekly ★ 09/21/2015 MWA Grandmaster Crais is at the top of his game in his 16th Elvis Cole novel (after 2012’s Taken). When the L.A. PI goes looking for chemical engineer Amy Breslyn, who has absconded with $460,000 from her company, Woodson Energy Solutions, he learns that Amy’s motive involves her journalist son, who died in a terrorist bombing in Nigeria 16 months earlier. The investigation takes Cole to a house in Echo Park crammed with explosives—a locale that also attracts LAPD K-9 officer Scott James and his German shepherd Maggie (the protagonists of 2013’s Suspect). At the house, a criminal mastermind eludes the team, but when the crook realizes that James can identify him, he determines to eliminate the K-9 officer. Meanwhile, the Major Crimes squad becomes suspicious of Cole, who calls on his partner, the ultracryptic Joe Pike, for help. Pike in turn enlists the talents of former Delta Force op Jon Stone, now a mercenary. The resolution of the complicated conspiracy is both clever and touching. Agent: Aaron Priest, Aaron M. Priest Literary Agency. (Nov.)