Robert Crais’ Marine Hero, Joe Pike

From Marilyn Stasio in the Times:

Whenever Robert Crais feels the need to refresh himself, he can always activate Joe Pike, a saturnine former soldier who performs id-like functions for Elvis Cole, the Hollywood private eye who is Crais’s regular series hero. Pike calls the shots in THE FIRST RULE (Putnam, $26.95), a pumped-up thriller that takes its title from the guiding principle of Russian mobsters: namely, that personal relationships mean nothing in their business. Or, as one federal agent remarks: ‘Mom, Dad, the brother, Sis — those people do not matter.’  But personal relationships mean everything to Pike, a no-nonsense action figure who brilliantly ­wages his own clandestine war on the hit men who killed one of his former operatives and the man’s entire family, including the nanny, during a home invasion. Working with select members of the elite brotherhood of mercenaries he once led and using maneuvers he learned in the Marines, Pike proves more efficient than the feds and more ruthless than the mobsters. His code of honor may be simplistic — you stand up for your guys, no matter what — but it allows tough men to have tender feelings without becoming unmanned.