Why doesnt Elvis Cole have a cell phone?
We get this question a couple of times every week from new readers who have started reading the series at the beginning (see FAQ #1 above!), but havent yet reached the later books. Once more, we went to RC for the definitive answer. I wrote THE MONKEYS RAINCOAT twenty years ago. I began making notes about Elvis Cole and Joe Pike late in 1985 when I was living in a cabin in the San Bernadino Mountains at Lake Arrowhead, California, and finished TMR in the summer of 86. Hey, nobody had cell phones back then! Check out reruns of shows like MIAMI VICESonny Crockett (Don Johnson) was using a clunky old car phone the size of a shoe box! Later, I held off giving Elvis a cell phone as long as possible because I enjoyed writing the scenes where he was forced to use a pay phone. Inevitably, the pay phone scenes evolved into more than the phone callElvis would always encounter a minor but colorful character with whom he would have to interact. Sometimes I would play these scenes for humor, other
