Rating: 
Summary: Fantastic
Review: This is a really good read.... I'd read it twice.The dialogue and rhythm of the book is great.
Rating: 
Summary: Second one I've read, 1st one I really liked
Review: This is the second Leonard book I've read (Get Shorty being the first) and I completed it in about a day. It was funny, poignant, dead on dialogue that runied by sense of timing when I went back to another book and the story was almost perfect. I agree with the other reviewer that the build-up was lost to a rather empty ending which kind of left everyone exactly where they'd begun. It was nice to see teh adversarial and then comraderie that emnerged between the cop, Chris and the caretaker, ex-Black Panther, wannabe criminal mastermind Donnell, that was something that rang so true I laughed as I realized how this story was like half a dozen people sitting at a round table and the focus shifting from person to person from place to place until people started changing chairs. In a way no one really shifted too far from who they had originally been---Ginger/Greta the savvy but long-term planning naive actress who may've or may have not been coerced into rape/sex with the totally mentally invalid Woody. Even she isn't quite sure what happened and what she allowed in the final analysis. I felt that it was a missed point that she didn't leap or connive her way into marrying Woody when he proposed, that would've been a kicker! Robin the vengeful Hippie is a hoot---I couldn't help but picture all of them in a movie and I think that someone like Susan Sarandon would nail RObin perfectly, a frailty, a harsh strength and cunning wrapped with a slight haze of stupidity. Donnell is of course Sam L. Jackson, Chris maybe a Bruce Willis and Ginger would've been a nice departure for Julia Roberts or perhaps a breakout role for Aisha?, Woody---Oliver Platt and Skip--I can't remember the actor's name, maybe the neighbor from Grace Under Fire? Leonard gets you into the mood of being a participant in his novels, the story twists and twists and twists until it makes absolutely insane sense and you realize that it's a lot like life. The only weak part of this was why Juicy Mouth killed Booker with Donnell (did he?)---it wa sliek this was a plot device to get Chris in but in the end it really had too much or too little to do with the central blackmail/murder/extortion story---that and the weak ending are the only reasons why this book isn't 5 stars.
Rating:
Summary: Thrilling adventure
Review: Wow! what a wonderful, suspense, action packed thriller. 60's left over hippies, who would blow up buildings, banks, come back alive in 80's to extract revenge and collect booty from two rich brothers, snobs, and one a hopeless drunk. But they did not count on a energetic selfless honest cop who is also an expert in assembling and disassembling bombs. The last scene, a masterpiece, will keep you on the edge of the seat and all one has to do is keep turning the pages. It ends with a bang and the charectors reverberate long after you finish the book. Elmore Leonard's tour de force. A book begging to be a movie.
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