Explosive touch

YOU may not have heard of Robert Crais. You might not have read a word of his bestselling novels. But you will know his work. The whole world knows his work. His scriptwriting credits read like a list of the States' most ground-breaking television programmes. Hill Street Blues, Quincy, Cagney & Lacey, Miami Vice and LA Law owe much of their global success to the Crais treatment.

These days he is a novelist. His books are as successful as his TV shows, selling around the world. He has written eight LA detective novels and his latest book, Demolition Angel, will soon be made into a film. Sandra Bullock and Julia Roberts are among those apparently wanting to play the lead.

All this and Crais is still only 47.

But then, he started young. He set his heart on being a professional writer aged about ten. A combination of irrepressible talent and burning ambition saw him reach his goal in double quick time.

By the time he left high school, "I was writing pretty damn-near anything," he said. Encouraged by the sale of some short stories, he left his home state of Louisiana for Hollywood.

By his mid-20s he was writing scripts for the first pathology drama, Quincy. He found TV scripts easier to write than other fiction, despite the gruelling schedule and the studio bosses breathing down his neck.

He is reminded of those early days wherever he goes. "Of all the shows I've written for, I think Quincy is probably the one that's seen most, all over the planet.

"I will get e-mail: 'I was at the gym in Brisbane, they were playing old Quincy reruns, I thought I saw your name - did you write that?' It's a lot of fun for me."

His next project, police drama Hill Street Blues, changed the face of television. Crais joined the show as the story director on the second series.

Writing Hill Street was a team effort. The process began with a meeting of writers and producers where storylines were discussed. If your idea was thrown out, it was a particularly public rejection. "You develop a very tough skin," Crais admits.

It was partly a desire to leave the collaborative medium of TV that led him to write his first novel. "It was a decision to make a much more personal statement."

But why a detective story? "It's always appealed to me," said Crais, whose influences include Raymond Chandler and Robert B Parker.

"It's because of the clarity of crime fiction. The beauty of things being as simple as good versus evil, good guys and bad guys."

Even though he admits that in "the realm of greys, the realm of the anti-hero, no one is 100 per cent good or bad", he still enjoys crime fiction's ability for "distilling order from chaos".

And so do countless fans of his crime books, starring detectives Elvis Cole and Joe Pike. The police in his books are definitely the good guys, despite a trend for corrupt fictional detectives.

"I come from a family that's half cops," Crais explains. "It goes way back with me.

"I have an affinity with this stuff. I started with Raymond Chandler - that's, I guess, why I wrote cop shows. I could have written medical shows, or sitcoms. I wanted to write cop shows because it interested me.

"Cops are people. Police officers are just like me and you and the guy who pumps gas. They have good days and bad days."

His new book, Demolition Angel, is still set in the LA police department, but does not star Elvis Cole. Instead the leading character is Carol Starkey, a former technician with the bomb squad whose lover and partner died in the same blast that nearly killed her.

He got the idea after coming across the real LAPD bomb squad office by accident, while researching another book.

"It's the goddamnest thing you've ever seen. It looks like a classroom, but everywhere is covered with bombs and parts of bombs."

Crais decided not to write about terrorists, but instead explored the world of mentally unstable compulsives known as "bomb chronics".

"It's a compulsion, the same that arsonists feel when they have to set something on fire. There are people who are compelled to make explosions."

Often they get hurt in one of their own blasts. Crais said one bomb chronic in a Californian mental hospital has only two fingers left on his one remaining hand.

Crais will work on the screenplay for Demolition Angel on his return to the States. He will be happy to be home. "I love LA. It's a very edgy, marginal place.

"It's undeniably a place where people come to make their dreams come true."

Review

Demolition Angel by Robert Crais (Orion, £12.99)

INTRODUCING a new leading character can spell disaster or triumph for an author. Luckily, for Robert Crais it was the latter.

Out goes Elvis Cole, the hero of his last eight bestselling thrillers, and in comes Detective Carol Starkey, a fiesty, no-nonsense bomb investigator with the Los Angeles Police Department.

Starkey was a bomb technician until she and her partner - who was also her lover - were caught in an explosion. Her partner was killed, and Starkey was left emotionally and physically scarred.

Three years later and Starkey is asked to lead the investigation into the death of a bomb technician, deliberately killed as he attempted to defuse the device.

The notorious Mr Red, a freelance bombmaker, is believed to be responsible. He has made it his mission to murder bomb squad officers across the USA.

Through the Internet, Starkey develops an unlikely and unhealthy relationship with Mr Red, but will she ever catch him?

A real page-turner, Demolition Angel is as powerful as a tonne of Semtex.

Simon Ritchie

PICTURE: Detective writer Robert Crais, who also wrote TV scripts for leading shows such as Cagney & Lacey.