Thursday 3 March 2011

No Alibis Event - Robert Frickin' Crais!

(This event could well be sold out, but give Dave a call if you want to attend. You could catch a cancellation.)


No Alibis Bookstore is very pleased to announce that internationally-renowned crime novelist


Robert Crais-The Sentry

Fri March 4th 7pm



will be returning to Belfast to celebrate the launch of his new novel, THE SENTRY.

We are pleased to announce that the event will take place in the Ulster Museum, Botanic Gardens Belfast.

Entrance to the event will be via the Stranmillis Road access, opposite Café Conor.




Robert Crais is the author of the best-selling Elvis Cole novels. A native of Louisiana, he grew up on the banks of the Mississippi River in a blue collar family of oil refinery workers and police officers. He purchased a secondhand paperback of Raymond Chandler’s The Little Sister when he was fifteen, which inspired his lifelong love of writing, Los Angeles, and the literature of crime fiction.


After years of amateur film-making and writing short fiction, he journeyed to Hollywood in 1976 where he quickly found work writing scripts for such major television series as Hill Street Blues, Cagney & Lacey, and Miami Vice, as well as numerous series pilots and Movies-of-the-Week for the major networks. He received an Emmy nomination for his work on Hill Street Blues.

He is most proud of his 4-hour NBC miniseries, Cross of Fire, which the New York Times declared:

"A searing and powerful documentation of the Ku Klux Klan’s rise to national prominence in the 20s."



Upon the death of his father in 1985, Crais was inspired to create Elvis Cole, using elements of his own life as the basis of the story. The resulting novel, The Monkey’s Raincoat, won the Anthony and Macavity Awards and was nominated for the Edgar Award. It has since been selected as one of the 100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association.


Elvis Cole’s readership and fan base grew with each new book, then skyrocketed in 1999 upon the publication of L. A. Requiem, which was a New York Times and Los Angeles Times bestseller . Booklist added, "This is an extraordinary crime novel that should not be pigeonholed by genre. The best books always land outside preset boundaries. A wonderful experience."



Crais followed with his first non-series novel, Demolition Angel, which was published in 2000 and featured former Los Angeles Police Department Bomb Technician Carol Starkey. Starkey has since become a leading character in the Elvis Cole series. In 2001, Crais published his second non-series novel, Hostage, which was named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times and was a world-wide bestseller. Additionally, the editors of Amazon.com selected Hostage as the #1 thriller of the year.

A film adaptation of Hostage was released in 2005, starring Bruce Willis as ex-LAPD SWAT negotiator Jeff Talley.

Elvis Cole returned in 2003 with the publication of The Last Detective, followed by the tenth Elvis Cole novel, The Forgotten Man, in 2005. Both novels explore with increasing depth the natures and characters of Elvis Cole and Joe Pike. RC’s third stand-alone novel, The Two Minute Rule, was published in 2006, and was followed in 2007 by

The Watchman, the first novel in the Elvis Cole/Joe Pike series to feature Joe Pike in the title role.


The novels of Robert Crais have been published in 42 countries and are bestsellers around the world. Robert Crais is the 2006 recipient of the Ross Macdonald Literary Award.



Tickets for this event are available from No Alibis Bookstore, price £5.

Payment can be made with all major credit cards by calling 028-90-3019601.

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