Robert Crais, The Watchman

The Watchman

Robert Crais

Simon & Schuster, Mar 2007, $25.95

ISBN: 0743281632

The key metric in robbing a bank is completing the full process with a cycle time of two minutes or under. Failure leads to trouble. For instance, when successful robbery team Marchenko and Parsons took longer than the two minute safety margin; they ended up dead in a police shoot-out. Another example of a pro who always finished his work under two minutes is Max Holman; his one time outside the upper control limit was stopping to provide CPR to a person suffering a heart attack. His reward for being the "hero bandit" was a decade in prison.

Just freed from jail and nearing fifty, Max wants to reestablish a relationship with his son Richard, a Los Angeles cop. However, he is too late as his son along with three other officers is dead from what looks like a hit. Officially Warren Juarez is the killer with a revenge motive but commits suicide making this a closed case. However, unofficially LAPD and the FBI think the four cops were seeking the estimated $15 million missing Marchenko and Parsons loot hidden from their successful bank jobs. Max obsesses with a need to know so he turns to former FBI Agent Katherine Pollard, who sent him to prison, to help him learn the truth.

The partnering of the former agent and the bank robber she sent up the river makes for a unique crime thriller that hooks the audience from the moment Robert Crais explains the two minute rule with no variance and never slows down as rival groups compete for the loot on the streets of Los Angeles. The storyline is fast-paced and filled with non-stop action, but it is the teaming up of the fully developed strange bedfellows and a solid support cast that either warns each away from the other or competes for the loot that turns THE WATCHMAN into a fabulous suspense thriller.

Harriet Klausner