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Scott Timberg on Creative Destruction

Robert Crais vs. LA Noir

January 11, 2010 by Scott Timberg

TOMORROW is the release date for the new novel by Robert Crais, “The First Rule.” Crime fiction aficionados know Crais as a deft, literate writer with a strong sense of place and of social history — one of the great inheritors of Ross Macdonald in the world of West Coast noir.

HERE is my profile of Crais, who is one of the best adjusted novelists I’ve ever spoken to — someone who seems comfortable in this world as well as the imaginary world of his fiction. The piece tells the story of his long slog up from TV writing, his embracing and then (partial) outgrowing of Raymond Chandler’s influence, the development of his private eye character Elvis Cole, and the emergence of Cole’s sidekick Joe Pike into the lead position in some of his novels, beginning with “The Watchman.”

And here, by the way, is writer Paula Woods’ review of the new Crais novel.


Part of what I like about Crais is that he not only executes these books at a very high level, with a clockwork consistency, he’s thought about what he’s doing and can speak perceptively about the tradition in the broadest possible sense.

Photo credit: robertcrais.com

Filed Under: books, Los Angeles, noir, raymond chandler, robert crais, ross macdonald

Scott Timberg

I'm a longtime culture writer and editor based in Los Angeles; my book "CULTURE CRASH: The Killing of the Creative Class" came out in 2015. My stories have appeared in The New York Times, Salon and Los Angeles magazine, and I was an LA Times staff writer for six years. I'm also an enthusiastic if middling jazz and indie-rock guitarist. (Photo by Sara Scribner) Read More…

Culture Crash, the Book

My book came out in 2015, and won the National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Award. The New Yorker called it "a quietly radical rethinking of the very nature of art in modern life"

I urge you to buy it at your favorite independent bookstore or order it from Portland's Powell's.

Culture Crash

Here is some information on my book, which Yale University Press published in 2015. (Buy it from Powell's, here.) Some advance praise: With coolness and equanimity, Scott Timberg tells what in less-skilled hands could have been an overwrought horror story: the end of culture as we have known … [Read More...]

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