<b> From the <i>New York Times</i>-bestselling author who sets the standard for intense, powerful crime- writing comes a blistering thriller featuring Joe Pike and Elvis Cole. </b><br><br> <i>The Watchman</i> put Joe Pike, Elvis Cole's strong, taciturn partner, front and center, and not only won Robert Crais new audiences but remarkable reviews. The <i>South Florida Sun-Sentinel</i> said "Robert Crais elevates crime fiction" and now with <i>The First Rule</i> he does it again.<br><br> The organized criminal gangs of the former Soviet Union are bound by what they call the thieves' code. The first rule is this: A thief must forsake his mother, father, brothers, and sisters. He must have no family-no wife, no children. We are his family. If any of the rules are broken, it is punishable by death.<br><br> Frank Meyer had the American dream-until the day a professional crew invaded his home and murdered everyone inside. The only thing out of the ordinary about Meyer was that- before the family and the business and the normal life-a younger Frank Meyer had worked as a professional mercenary, with a man named Joe Pike. The police think Meyer was hiding something very bad, but Pike does not. With the help of Cole, he sets out on a hunt of his own-an investigation that quickly entangles them both in a web of ancient grudges, blood ties, blackmail, vengeance, double crosses, and cutthroat criminal­ity, and at the heart of it, an act so terrible even Pike and Cole have no way to measure it. Sometimes, the past is never dead. It's not even past.<br><br> <i>The First Rule</i> is the most astonishing novel yet from the master of the crime thriller.<br><br><br><br> Watch a Video