One of my least favorite Elmore Leonard books. The dialogue is there, the characters are there, but the plot seems padded and it took a long time to get anything going in the story. Might have been a great short story, but this novel just didn't work for me. ( )

more tragic than any other leonard i’ve read ( )

Most of the Elmore Leonard novels I read score 4 stars, I've noticed. He seems incapable of writing a 2 or a 5 star book, at least so far. I will never reread an Elmore Leonard book, because there will always be another Elmore Leonard book to read.

If I somehow managed to finish them all, I'm sure the Estate of Elmore Leonard would release a dozen more posthumous works recovered from one of his desk drawers.

Leonard is a very consistent writer. His books have consistency. This one, like the others I've read, reads flowingly, quickly, and snappily. His novels are like good HBO dramas, with the accompanying profanity. He is like Chandler, but rated R instead of PG-13.

The characters in this book are especially interesting. You can put yourself in their shoes. The way the author depicts their despicable actions plainly, and allows us to learn about them through dialogue, is as effective as I have come to expect.

The downside of Leonard is, the more of him you read, the more the novels begin to blend together. This means that the intricate plot twists begin to seem less fresh and the surprises are not in any way mind-blowing, but you just have to keep coming back for the characters.

You get the feel for his grimy streets, and in this novel, the posh streets and parking lots, the haunted Palm Beach backyards, and his singular talent is nowhere more evident than in his priceless dialogue. 90% of his book is typically dialogue. I can picture the characters most of the time by what they say alone. Dialogue is king in crime fiction, I guess, and Leonard has it down.

Usually, the set-up comes early, and the plot unfolds in a more believable fashion than most other noir-ish yarns. I can totally see a jaded millionaire acting like that, and the suspicious people surrounding him fit the bill nicely. It is best to sit back and enjoy this novel in real time. Read it quickly if you can, and if it is your first Leonard novel, it just might get you hooked. ( )

Coming off of The Reckoning, I needed something like an Elmore Leonard novel: dialogue-driven and page-turning. I’ve read around twenty of them, but never this one from 1981. This isn’t his best.

The title epitomizes the book: didn’t he have an editor to tell him how clunky it sounds? It doesn’t roll off the tongue. And while the titles of Leonard’s books are like the titles of James Bond movies, this one falls flat. The other issue is that the plot revolves around a millionaire who wants to kill someone because … he wants to kill someone. I know, I know—any excuse for the dialogue—but I couldn’t shake the feeling of, “That’s it?” At least when the crimes revolve around revenge or money, the reader could understand the criminals’ motives. Here, the net result is a shrug of the shoulders. I finished it so I could say, “Right, good.”

But it’s not terrible. There are a few funny spots and Walter Kouza, the ex-cop that Harvey Keitel was born to play, is a terrific Leonard type. Better weak Elmore Leonard than what Nabokov called poshlost, the second-rate masquerading as first-rate. This one is from that period in Leonard’s career when he was still gritty (the superior Swag was in 1976 and Stick was in 1982) but before he turned the corner and became more celebrated by the literati who assumed they were granting all of us permission to enjoy a book that was sold in drugstore racks. Not that there are “drugstore racks” any more, but anyone who likes Leonard will get the point. ( )

I gave it a 3-star. Because I expected more from E.L. Anyone else would get a 4.

And you know it's going to turn out bad when a detective uses the "L" word.

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