Lullaby Town was published by Bantam in 1992. Peter Alan Nelson is a blockbuster film director (transparently modeled on the young Spielberg/Lucas generation) who, as a nobody, abandoned his wife and infant son. Now famous and guilt-ridden, he hires Cole to find them. Cole locates Karen Lloyd in a small Connecticut town — but she’s involved with a New York Mafia family, laundering money through her business.
The novel complicates the PI formula: Cole’s client wants reunion, but the woman he finds has built a life that exposure would destroy. Karen doesn’t want to be found. The mob connection makes everything dangerous. And Cole must decide whose interests he serves — the paying client or the woman who never asked for his help.
Crais moved the action from Los Angeles to the East Coast for the first time, and the contrast — Cole’s California informality against New England reserve and New York menace — sharpened both settings. The novel received an Anthony Award nomination and established that the Cole/Pike series could sustain itself beyond the initial Los Angeles milieu.
Collecting Lullaby Town
First edition (Bantam, New York, 1992): Paperback original. First US hardcover from Hyperion in 1992.
Market values:
- First Hyperion hardcover, fine in jacket: $40–$100
- First printing Bantam paperback: $10–$25