The American crime fiction author, Robert Crais was born June 20 1953, in Independence, Louisiana. He was adopted and raised as an only child. He attended Louisiana State University and studied mechanical engineering. He later moved to Hollywood in 1976 and began a career writing scripts for television shows such as Hill Street Blues, Cagney & Lacey, Quincy, Miami Vice and L.A. Law.
Crais started writing detective fiction, this was inspired by the novels of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Ernest Hemingway, Robert B. Parker and John Steinbeck. He was also nominated for an Emmy award. Following the death of his father in 1985, he published his first novel, The Monkey’s Raincoat, which won the 1988 Anthony Award for “Best First Novel” and the 1988 Mystery Readers International Macavity Award for “Best Paperback Original”.
In 2006 Crais was awarded the Ross Macdonald Literary Award and in 2010 the Private Eye Writers of America’s (PWA) Lifetime Achievement Award The Eye. In 2014 he is scheduled to receive the Mystery Writers of America’s (MWA) Grand Master Award. His novels include: The Monkey’s Raincoat, Demolition Angel, Hostage, Suspect, and The Two-Minute Rule, all of Crais’ books feature Cole and Pike, with The Watchman (2007), The First Rule (2010) and The Sentry (2011) centering on Joe Pike. The 2012 Detective Novel Taken is the fifteenth in a series of linked novels centering on the character Elvis Cole and the 2005 film, Hostage, was also an adaptation of one of his books.
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