The cops call private investigator Elvis Cole in the middle of the night: never a good thing. He gets an even worse jolt when they tell him that a shabby old man who just died of a gunshot wound claimed to be his long-lost father. Elvis doesn’t know what to think. He never met his father. His delusional mother, herself long dead, claimed his father worked as a “human cannonball” at a carnival. This led teenaged Elvis to track down countless carnivals, which in turn prompted a private investigator to point out the boy’s obvious talent at detective work and put Elvis on the road to his eventual career.

Full of dread, Elvis meets with cops, and views the body. Something in his heart tells him this can’t be his father. Not this rundown individual covered with home-made religious tattoos. But he’s willing to help the cops solve the murder. Especially since it should explain why this man would claim to be his father.

Two bickering cops head up the investigation: the reptilian-cool Kelly Diaz, and the rookie whose abilities she underestimates, the surly Jeff Pardy. Elvis immediately alienates them by forging off on his own in his usual maverick manner. He questions people at a hotel where the dead man stayed. He finds out that the victim placed some calls to an escort service. He and his ever-intimidating partner Joe Pike visit the owner of the escort service who works out of a suburban house. They confiscate the creep’s computer. They interview the girls with whom the dead man associated, and find out that the poor sap paid each girl two hundred dollars – merely to sit and pray with him for his forgiveness.

How weird. Obviously the dead guy had a guilty conscience about something. A minor character’s viewpoint offers a clue: Frederick, who knew the dead guy as Payne, frantically visits Payne’s cabin in the woods to remove evidence of multiple murders.

Meanwhile, Elvis and Joe uncover a blackmailing scheme being run by the owner of the escort service. This additional illegal activity makes the escorts even more unwilling to talk to Elvis and Joe.

If things weren’t complicated enough, we meet the appealingly rough-edged LAPD detective Carol Starkey to whom Elvis often turns for help in the investigation. Poor dense Elvis doesn’t realize that Carol is falling in love with him. He’s too busy daydreaming about the simpering lawyer Lucy from L.A. Requiem who has dumped him for not being a good influence on her little boy Ben. However, Lucy is not above popping over to Los Angeles when she feels like it, and making Elvis jump through hoops to win her approval.

The Forgotten Man can be read as a stand-alone though it is the 10th installment in Crais’s Elvis Cole/Joe Pike series. The Forgotten Man can be found on Amazon through this link: The Forgotten Man (Elvis Cole Novels)