Crais, Robert

Private detective Elvis Cole is panicked when Ben Chenier, the ten-year-old son of his lawyer lover Lucy, disappears while in his care, and his dread only grows stronger when it begins to appear Elvis's own past is the motive for the kidnapping.

Presents mystery short stories that have been published in the United States during the year.

Struggling to reclaim his career after the devastating murder of his partner eight months earlier, LAPD cop Max Kent is teamed with a traumatized military canine named Maggie who assists Max in an effort to trackk down his late partner's killer.

In a sleepy suburb north of Los Angeles, a convenience store robbery turns violent. With the police on their tail, three criminals flee the scene and invade a home in an exclusive gated community, taking captive a panicked father and his two children.

A wealthy industrialist's son was believed to have faked his own kidnapping, but Cole and Pike find it was no fake. The boy and his secret girlfriend have been taken by professional border kidnappers who buy, sell, and steal victims like commodities. When Cole goes undercover to try to buy the hostages back, he himself disappears. It is up to Pike to retrace Cole's steps.

Dru Rayne and her uncle fled to L.A. after Hurricane Katrina. Now, five years later, they face a different danger. When Joe Pike witnesses Dru's uncle beaten by a protection gang, he offers his help, but neither of them want it and neither do the federal agents mysteriously watching them. As the level of violence escalates, and Pike himself becomes a target, he and Elvis Cole learn that Dru and her uncle are not who they seem and that everything he thought he knew about them has been a lie.

Elvis Cole is hired by Nita Morales to find her daughter, who she thinks is just hiding out with her boyfriend and is asking for money, but Cole realizes they have been kidnapped by bajadores, bandits who prey on other bandits, and when Cole goes undercover to try and buy her back he goes missing and now it is up to his partner, Joe Pike to find them both.

Frank Meyer, a former military contractor and mercenary who used to work with Joe Pike, loses his family when a professional crew raids his home, but when the police suspect Meyer to have been hiding something, Elvis Cole helps Pike search beyond grudges, blackmail, and double crosses in an effort to clear Meyer's name.