Riding the Rap: A Novel
(Libby/OverDrive eBook, Kindle)

Harry Arno, the bookie who loves Ezra Pound, and Raylan Givens, the Shane of South Beach, are back. When last seen, at the conclusion of Elmore Leonard's Pronto , 69-year-old Harry was dancing between the Feds and the Mob, both of whom had misgivings about his behavior, and the anachronistic lawman Givens was calmly shooting Tommy "The Zip" Bucks across an art deco cocktail table in the bar of the Cardozo Hotel. We pick up the action a few months later with Harry drinking too much Absolut vodka and making the mistake of hiring Puerto Rican tough guy Bobby Dio to collect 16.5K from a deadbeat who hasn't paid his sports bets. When the deadbeat and his cronie, a Bahamanian con man named Louis Lewis, join forces with Bobby Deo to abduct Harry, and when Raylan gives chase with the help of a slightly bent fortune teller, all the pieces are in place for another of Leonard's irresistible tragicomedies. If Pronto was the Marx Brothers with guns, this sequel is a stoned version of "Ransom of Red Chief." Anyone who thinks Quentin Tarantino invented the idea of juxtaposing bursts of graphic violence against the comic ordinariness of daily life needs to do a little homework--Leonard's lovably lethal lowlifes were mixing humanity with mayhem long before Tarantino began his career as a video-store clerk. Still, it's no surprise that the creator of Pulp Fiction has optioned four Leonard novels, nor for that matter, that John Travolta will star in the film version of Leonard's Get Shorty, to open this summer. Nobody writes snappier dialogue than Leonard, and nobody understands more about the thin line separating hip bravado from wet-palmed terror. (Reviewed Mar. 1, 1995)0385308477Bill Ott

Leonard's latest, about a kidnapped bookie, spent two weeks on PW's bestseller list. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Simple scams usually turn complex in Leonard land, where the author can doubtless choreograph his scammers' moves in his sleep by now; indeed, much of Rap appears to be riding on automatic pilot. Nevertheless, even middling Leonard is as good as anyone else gets on a good day. This darkly witty page-turner returns to the vexed, triangular relationship of Florida marshal Raylan Givens, his girlfriend, Joyce, and her ex-lover, the aging bookie Harry Arno (all seen previously in Pronto). When Harry disappears while chasing down a tardy debtor named Chip Ganz, Joyce admonishes Raylan to investigate. It turns out Chip is a middle-aged pothead living in his mother's seedy beach mansion, whose stoned analysis of televised hostage situations has fueled a baroque kidnapping scheme, into which Harry has stumbled. Like many a Leonard bad guy, Ganz only talks a good game. It falls upon an ex-con and his preening psychotic cohort to execute the caper, with help from an alluring psychic. Raylan's probe takes him into a shadowy New Age subculture of Tarot readings and Hugger conventions, which Leonard limns with characteristic grit and black humor. Ultimately, however, the story lacks the high voltage of Leonard's best work. (May) Copyright 1995 Cahners Business Information.

Leonard's latest, about a kidnapped bookie, spent two weeks on PW's bestseller list. (June) Copyright 1996 Cahners Business Information.