Authors: Elmore Leonard
Killshot
(1989)
It’s not Carmen Colson and her ironworker husband Wayne’s fault that they were in the real estate office when a pair of thugs walked in with extortion on their minds. But as far as aging Ojibway Indian hit man Armand Degas is concerned, the Colsons are going to have to pay dearly for seeing too much . . . and for the damage Wayne inflicted on Armand and his sicko partner Richie Nix with a tire iron. The cops here in middle-of-nowhere Michigan can’t help Carmen and Wayne out, and the best the Feds can offer is the Witness Protection Program. So ultimately it’s going to have to come down to one wife, one husband, two killers . . . and one lethal shot.
Seattle Times:
“Nerve-wracking. . . . The tightest, best-written thriller of the year.”
From the novel:
Richie Nix bought a T-shirt at Henry’s restaurant in Algonac that had
IT’S NICE TO BE NICE
written across the front. He changed in the men’s room: took off his old T-shirt and threw it away, put on the new one looking at himself in the mirror, but then didn’t know what to do with his gun. If he put his denim jacket back on to hide the nickel-plate .38 revolver stuck in his jeans, you couldn’t read the T-shirt. What he did was roll the .38 up inside the jacket and carried it into the dining area.
There was a big
IT’S NICE TO BE NICE
wood-carved sign on the shellacked knotty-pine wall in the main room, over past the salad bar. It had been the restaurant’s slogan for fifty years. Most people who came to Henry’s liked a table by the front windows, so they could watch the freighters and ore carriers if they wanted, though he was more interested this evening in keeping an eye on the restaurant parking lot. He needed a car for a new business he was getting into.
Get Shorty
(1990)
Mob-connected loanshark Chili Palmer is sick of the Miami grind — plus his “friends” have a bad habit of dying there. So when he chases a deadbeat client out to Hollywood, Chili figures he might like to stay. This town with its dreammakers, glitter, hucksters, and liars — plus gorgeous, partially clad would-be starlets everywhere you look — seems ideal for an enterprising criminal with a taste for the cinematic. Besides, Chili’s got an idea for a killer movie — though it could very possibly kill him to get it made.
The Wall Street Journal
: “The funniest crime thriller ever set among the hustlers and con artists of the movie colony.”
Detroit News
: “A Hollywood hit. . . . Bound to knock the socks off a lot of people. . . . Taut, inimitable prose and characters who could have only sprung from the mind of Elmore Leonard.”
From the novel:
When Chili first came to Miami Beach twelve years ago they were having one of their off-and-on cold winters: thirty-four degrees the day he met Tommy Carlo for
lunch at Vesuvio’s on South Collins and had his leather jacket ripped off. One his wife had given him for Christmas a year ago. before they moved down here.
Chili and Tommy were both from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, old buddies now in business together. Tommy Carlo was connected to a Brooklyn crew through his uncle, a guy named Momo, Tommy keeping his books and picking up betting slips till Momo sent him to Miami, with a hundred thousand to put on the street as loan money. Chili was connected through some people on his mother’s side, the Manzara brothers. He worked usually for Manzara Moving & Storage in Bensonhurst, finding high volume customers for items such as cigarettes, TVs, VCRs, stepladders, dresses, frozen orange juice. . . . But he never could be a made guy himself because of tainted blood, some Sunset Park Puerto Rican on his father’s side, even though he was raised Italian. Chili didn’t care to be made anyway, get into all that bullshit having to do with respect.
Maximum Bob
(1991)
Hard-ass Palm Beach County judge Bob Isom Gibbs enjoys sending even petty offenders away to do hard time — which has made the list of miscreants who want him dead longer than a fully grown Florida gator’s tail. And a good number of his ill-wishers
are probation officer Kathy Baker’s clients, including young Dale Crowe and his psycho uncle Elvin. Now, Kathy’s got an even more daunting task than keeping BIG’s horny hands off her: keeping “Maximum Bob” alive. Because Gibbs’s many enemies seem to be willing to go to any lengths — be it death by amphibian or some more tried-and-true method — to permanently end the career of an oversexed, racist jurist who’s more interested in scoring than in saving his own red neck.
Washington Post Book World
: “Scary . . . hilarious . . . strange and risky. . . . A right-on, pitch-perfect novel . . . [with] juicy characters who wrench your heart and gut.”
From the novel:
Dale Crowe Junior told Kathy Baker, his probation officer, he didn’t see where he had done anything wrong. He had gone to the go-go bar to meet a buddy of his, had one beer, that’s all, while he was waiting, minding his own business and this go-go whore came up to his table and starting giving him a private dance he never asked for.
“They move your knees apart to get in close,” Dale Crowe said, “so they can put it right in your face. This one’s name was Earlene. I told her I wasn’t interested, she kept right on doing it, so I got up and left. The go-go whore starts yelling I owe her five bucks and this bouncer come running over. I give him a shove was all, go outside and there’s a green and white parked by the front door waiting. The bouncer, he tries to get tough then, showing off, so I give him one, popped him good thinking the deputies would see he’s the one started it. Shit they cuff me, throw me in the squad car, won’t even hear my side of it. Next thing, they punch me up on this little computer they have? The one deputy goes, ‘Oh, well look it here. He’s on probation. Hit a police officer.’ Well, then they’re just waiting for me to give ’em a hard time. And you don’t think I wasn’t set up?”
Rum Punch
(1992)
Ordell “Whitebread” Robbie makes a fine living selling illegal high-powered weaponry to the wrong people. Jackie Burke couriers Ordell’s profits from Freeport to Miami. But the feds are on to Jackie — and now the aging, but still hot, flight attendant will have to do prison time or play ball, which makes her a prime “loose end” that Ordell needs to tie up permanently. Jackie, however, has
other options. And with the help of Max Cherry — an honest but disgruntled bail bondsman looking to get out — she could even end up with a serious nest egg in the process.
Washington Post Book World
: “Vintage Leonard. . . . As unputdownable as anyone could wish. The plot is pleasingly convoluted. . . . The story goes down easy, and packs a real wallop in the end.”
From the novel:
Sunday morning, Ordell took Louis to watch the white-power demonstration in downtown Palm Beach.
“Young skinhead Nazis,” Ordell said. “Look, even little Nazi girls marching down Worth Avenue. You believe it? Coming now you have the Klan, not too many here today. Some of them in green, must be the coneheads’ new spring shade. Behind them it looks like some Bikers for Racism, better known as the Dixie Knights. We gonna move on ahead, fight through the crowd here,” Ordell said, bringing Louis along.
“There’s a man I want to show you. See who he reminds you of. He told me they’re gonna march up South County and have their show on the steps of the
fountain by city hall. You ever see so many police? Yeah, I expect you have. But not all these different uniforms at one time. They mean business too, got their helmets on, their riot ba-tons. Stay on the sidewalks or they liable to hit you over the head. They keeping the street safe for the Nazis.”
Pronto
(1993)
The feds want Miami bookmaker Harry Arno to squeal on his wiseguy boss. So they’re putting word out on the street that Arno’s skimming profits from “Jimmy Cap” Capotorto — which he is, but everybody does it. He was planning to retire to Italy someday anyway, so Harry figures now’s a good time to get lost. U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens knows Harry’s tricky — the bookie ditched him once in an airport while in the marshal’s custody — but not careful. So Raylan’s determined to find the fugitive’s Italian hideaway before a cold-blooded Sicilian “Zip” does and whacks Arno for fun. After all, it’s a “pride thing”. . . and it might even put Raylan in good stead with Harry’s sexy ex-stripper girlfriend Joyce.
Entertainment Weekly
: “The man knows how to grab you — and
Pronto
is one of the best grabbers in years.”
From the novel:
One evening, it was toward the end of October, Harry Arno said to the woman he’d been seeing on and off the past few years. “I’ve made a decision. I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anybody before in my life.”
Joyce said, “You mean something you did when you were in the war?”
It stopped him. “How’d you know that?”
“When you were in Italy and shot the deserter?”
Harry didn’t say anything, staring at her.
“You already told me about it.”
“Come on. When?”
“We were having drinks at the Cardozo, outside, not long after we started seeing each other again. You said it the same way you did just now, like you’re going to tell me a secret. That’s why I knew. Only I don’t think you said anything about making a decision.”
Riding the Rap
(1995)
Now that his mom’s gravy train has derailed, gambling, debt-ridden Palm Beach playboy Warren “Chip” Ganz has decided to take somebody rich hostage — with the help of a Bahamian ex-con, a psycho gardener/enforcer, and the beautiful, if underfed, psychic Reverend Dawn. The trouble is they choose bookmaker Harry Arno as their victim, and Harry can scam with the best. The BIG trouble is ace manhunter U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens is sleeping with Harry’s ex-exotic dancer ex-girlfriend, and Joyce wants Harry found. And since nearly
everyone
has guns, locating and springing the captive bookie most probably can’t happen without some measure of lethal difficulty.
Washington Post
: “Leonard remains the uncontested master of the crime thriller. This latest one, ranking up there with his best, secures his hold on the title.”
From the novel:
Ocala Police picked up Dale Crowe Junior for weaving, two o’clock in the morning, crossing the center line and having a busted taillight. Then while Dale was blowing a point-one-nine they put his name and date
of birth into the national crime computer and learned he was a fugitive felon, wanted on a three-year-old charge of Unlawful Flight to Avoid Incarceration. A few days later Raylan Givens, with the Marshal Service, came up from Palm Beach County to take Dale back and the Ocala Police wondered about Raylan.
How come if he was a federal officer and Dale Crowe Junior was wanted on a state charge. . . He told them he was with FAST, the Fugitive Apprehension Strike Team, assigned to the Sheriff’s Office in West Palm. And that was pretty much all the marshal said. They wondered too, since he was alone, how he’d be able to drive and keep an eye on his prisoner. Dale Crowe Junior had been convicted of a third-degree five-year felony, Battery of a Police Officer, and was looking at additional time on the fugitive warrant. Dale Junior might feel he had nothing to lose on the trip south. He was a rangy kid with the build of a college athlete, bigger than the marshal in his blue suit and cowboy boots — the marshal calm though, not appearing to be the least apprehensive. He said the West Palm strike team was shorthanded at the moment, the reason he was alone, but believed he would manage.
Out of Sight
(1996)
Jack Foley was busting out of Florida’s Glades Prison when he ran head-on into Karen Sisco with a shotgun. Suddenly the world-class gentleman felon was sharing a cramped car trunk with a disarmed federal marshal — whose Chanel suit cost more than the take from Foley’s last bank job — and the chemistry was working overtime. Here’s a lady Jack could fall for in a big way, if she weren’t a dedicated representative of the law that he breaks for a living. And as soon as she escapes, he’s already missing her. But there are some seriously bad men and a major score waiting for Jack in Motown. And there’s a good chance that when his path crosses Karen’s again, she’s going to be there for business, not pleasure.
New York Daily News
: “Cool and fun. . . . A sly romance about the missed connections of life, which is also a hell of a comedy crime caper with a fine cast of sociopaths, misfits, and losers.”
From the novel:
From the covered crawl space beneath the prison chapel to the grass just beyond the razor wire perimeter fence. They had been digging since before
Christmas with their hands and a broken shovel, using scrap lumber from the construction site of a new wing being added to the chapel to shore up the walls of the tunnel. It was Christmas Day, Foley happen to see Chino and Lulu come out of the ficus bushes in front of the chapel, their faces streaked with black dirt, muck, but wearing clean blues. What were they doing, making out in the bushes? That wasn’t Chino’s style, so Foley the fight fan said, “Don’t tell me about it ‘less you want to.” And Chino said this time to his Anglo friend, “You want to go with us?”
Foley said he didn’t want any part of it — only three feet of crawl space underneath the chapel, pitch-dark in there, maybe run into fucking mole rats face-to-face. No thanks. He’d said to Chino. “Don’t you know you’re digging through Everglades muck? I’ve talked to people. They say it’s wet and’ll cave in on you.” Chino said, yeah, that’s what people thought, but the tunnel only caved in once. . . .
Foley said to Chino that Christmas Day, “If I caught on, how come none of the hacks have?”
Be Cool
(1999)
After one triumph and one flop, Mafia loanshark-turned-Hollywood producer Chili Palmer is desperate for another hit . . . of the celluloid sort. And when a similarly relocated former mob associate takes a hit of the bullet-in-the-brain variety while they’re power-lunching, Chili begins to see all kinds of story possibilities. The whacked recording company mogul’s midday demise is leading Chili into the twisted world of rock stars, pop divas, and hip-hop gangstas, which is rife with drama, jealousy, and betrayal — all the stuff that makes big box office. Tinsel Town had better take cover, because Chili Palmer’s working on another movie. And that’s when people tend to
die
.