Robert Crais to Read from, Sign His Latest Thriller in St. Louis Tuesday, January 31st

If you're in the St. Louis area next Tuesday — or plan to be — you won't want to miss crime novelist Robert Crais, who will be reading from and signing his latest Elvis Cole/Joe Pike thriller Taken. Presented by the St. Louis County Library Foundation and Left Bank Books, the event will take place on Tuesday, January 31st, at 7 PM at Library Headquarters Auditorium, 1640 S. Lindbergh Blvd. It is free and open to the public.

In this 12th book of the series, when the police tell a wealthy industrialist that her missing son has faked his own kidnapping, she hires Elvis Cole and Joe Pike — and Cole soon determines that it was no fake. The boy and his secret girlfriend have been taken, and are now lost in the gray and changing world of the professional border kidnappers who prey not only on innocent victims but also on one another — buying, selling, and stealing victims like commodities. Fortunately, the kidnappers don't yet know who the boy is, but when Cole goes undercover to try to buy the two hostages back, he himself is taken and disappears. Now it is up to Pike to retrace Cole's steps, burning through the hard and murderous world of human traffickers … before it is too late.