A Dangerous Man, by Robert Crais (Elvis Cole #18, Joe Pike #7)

Robert Crais writes two wildly popular series featuring wise-cracking private investigator Elvis Cole and his ex-military, ex-mercenary side kick, Joe Pike. Some of the books focus more on Cole as the main character, and others on Pike, with Cole only as a minor character. A Dangerous Man is a Pike-centric story, where Pike happens to be on the scene at a bank when a bank teller is kidnapped. He quickly rescues her, and then tries to keep her safe from a band of mysterious bad guys.

These books are not high literary art, but I enjoy them for the same reason I like (or used to like) the Jack Reacher series: sometimes you just need mindless entertainment where a really bad-ass guy (or gal!) takes on the bad guys and wins. This is that kind of entertainment, and I enjoyed it for that reason. Some of the characters are one-dimensional, in particular the young female characters (who do a LOT of giggling, for some reason), but this is not the kind of book that you read for deep character descriptions. The dialogue with Cole is snappy, Joe Pike makes the bad guys pay, and for a few hours, the real world fades away.

Give these two series a shot if you’re looking for fun, entertaining crime fiction.