The Last Detective was published by Doubleday in 2003. Ben Chenier, the ten-year-old son of Cole’s girlfriend Lucy, is kidnapped from Cole’s home. The kidnapper doesn’t want money — he wants Cole to suffer. The abduction is revenge for something that happened in Vietnam, in the war Cole never discusses.
The novel alternates between Cole’s desperate present-tense search and flashbacks to his service as a Force Recon Marine — the elite reconnaissance unit whose missions involved deep penetration behind enemy lines. The “last detective” of the title refers both to Cole’s PI work and to his final mission in Vietnam, where his team was compromised and most of them died. Someone survived who blames Cole.
Crais peels back Cole’s California-casual persona more completely than in any previous novel: the wisecracks, the Pinocchio clock, the Jimmy Cricket philosophy are revealed as conscious choices made by a man who saw terrible things very young and decided to build a life defined by lightness rather than darkness. The kidnapping threatens to destroy that construction.
Collecting The Last Detective
First edition (Doubleday, New York, 2003): Boards with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine in jacket: $15–$30
- Signed first: $40–$80