Book ~ "Chasing Darkness" (2008) Robert Crais

From Amazon.com ~ It's fire season, and the hills of Los Angeles are burning. When police and fire department personnel rush door to door in a frenzied evacuation effort, they discover the week-old corpse of an apparent suicide. But the gunshot victim is less gruesome than what they find in his lap: a photo album of seven brutally murdered young women -- one per year, for seven years. And when the suicide victim is identified as a former suspect in one of the murders, the news turns Elvis Cole's world upside down.

Three years earlier Lionel Byrd was brought to trial for the murder of a female prostitute named Yvonne Bennett. A taped confession coerced by the police inspired a prominent defense attorney to take Byrd's case, and Elvis Cole was hired to investigate. It was Cole's eleventh-hour discovery of an exculpatory videotape that allowed Lionel Byrd to walk free. Elvis was hailed as a hero.

But the discovery of the death album in Byrd's lap now brands Elvis as an unwitting accomplice to murder. Captured in photographs that could only have been taken by the murderer, Yvonne Bennett was the fifth of the seven victims -- two more young women were murdered after Lionel Byrd walked free. So Elvis can't help but wonder -- did he, Elvis Cole, cost two more young women their lives?

Shut out of the investigation by a special LAPD task force determined to close the case, Elvis Cole and Joe Pike desperately fight to uncover the truth about Lionel Byrd and his nightmare album of death -- a truth hidden by lies, politics, and corruption in a world where nothing is what it seems to be.

I'm a fan of Robert Crais and his Elvis Cole series.

This book was okay but not great.

I find that I enjoy the earlier Elvis books more ... they are lighter and funny, which to me, was the appeal. This one is more like a crime thriller.

There were so many characters that I had a hard time at times keeping they all straight.

I figured out who dunnit way before the end ... but I still don't know why he/she dunnit. I was getting tired and I wanted to be finished so maybe I missed the motive? And I don't know how/where he/she dunnit. I guess I needed more of the details to pull it all together.