Significantly, Pike says to Cole: “Everyone needs somebody,” to which Cole replied: “Even you?” Yes, Crais is saying that even seemingly stoic, detached Pike needs somebody–like the rest of us who seek purpose in our lives.

I have read all of Crais books and the earlier ones in the Cole/Pike series (as I recall them, having read them as each was published) really do not delve as deeply into the characters of Cole and Pike as the more recent books. Rather than principally the extremely resourceful and brave heros, both Cole and Pike’s vulnerabilities are more and more central aspects of the recent installments. There’s Cole’s deeply felt feelings about being a fatherless child and over losing Lucy Chenier, the woman he loved whom he lost because of the danger that surrounds him, the precise danger he is not afraid to confront in order to help others–his best qualities result in pain and loss. Then among unspoken things that cause Pike to wake up bathed in sweat, there’s his great selfless sacrifice of resigning from his beloved LAPD in order to preserve his partner’s pension benefits for his widow, which she would not have been entitled to had Pike not hid the fact of his suicide by claiming to have accidently shot and killed the fellow.

Crais and his characters have been currently transporting heavy existential baggage and are not your standard shoot-em-up crime fiction.