Review by New York Times Review
Elmore Leonard's latest novel stars three familiar voices in a twisting tale of seduction and betrayal. THE virtuoso storyteller Elmore Leonard has been rightly praised for his technique: hot, fast narrative, tasty dialogue, strokes of character so quick they're invisible, never a detail that doesn't move things ahead. It's wonderful how much Leonard can do with a five-syllable sentence like "She left with the check." But a good book should also be about something. Although it isn't always mentioned, Leonard's books have subjects. "Road Dogs" is about the varying degrees of truth and baloney in human relationships. Sometimes the truth or the baloney is lethal. Droll and exciting, enriched by the self-aware, what-the-hell-why-not insouciance of a master now in his mid-80s, "Road Dogs" - underlying its material of sex, violence and money, and beyond its cast of cons and thugs and movie stars - presents interesting questions. Can a grown person change? Specifically, can a man abandon an expertise that wins him respect but makes a mess of his life? Can anybody trust anybody? Is love ever true? Is friendship ever real? Or, leaving aside love and friendship, does loyalty exist? And leaving aside loyalty, is respect possible between a man and a woman? We road dogs - trotting along companionably on our way to sniff and woof and boogie-woogie and perhaps knock over the occasional trash barrel together - are we reliable? In time of need or trouble, can any of us count on any of our pals and sweethearts not to turn on us, or turn away from us, sooner or later? The vivid, amusing characters who embody these matters include three figures from previous Leonard novels. One of these, the rich, short, passionate and ruthless crook Cundo Rey, was among the criminals exported to the United States by Fidel Castro. Here, Cundo is imported by Elmore Leonard from his earlier novel "LaBrava." Though now in prison, the Cuban is a prosperous criminal, owner of attractive houses in Venice, Calif. In one of those Venice houses lives Cundo's nefarious, supposedly faithful lover, Dawn Navarro, a gorgeous psychic and con artist who first appeared, younger and less upscale, as the hypnotic Reverend Dawn in Leonard's "Riding the Rap." To say that Dawn "appeared" sounds like movie language, and these characters do resemble actors, cast by Elmore Leonard to "play themselves," as the saying goes, in his new work of fiction. As in previous Leonard novels, the characters are interested in the movies, discuss movies intelligently. To call the narrative itself cinematic is a cliché. It's partly true, but this writer doesn't foolishly compete with cinema where cinema has the edge: his scenes of sex and violence are clever and brief, rapidly established to let the verbal engine of dialogue drive the story forward. THE third reappearing character, Jack Foley, is all but explicitly portrayed as George Clooney, who played the charming, intelligent and self-defeating bank robber Foley in "Out of Sight," Steven Soderbergh's excellent 1998 movie based on Leonard's novel of the same title. This Jack Foley is the Clooney of that film, a little older but still proficient in a dirty fight. The movie business gives Leonard many opportunities to laugh with and at the reader from the page - like an actor looking at the camera. In his fictional world, lawyers and criminals and law officers gain respect from one another by quoting dialogue from "Three Days of the Condor" or getting references to Terrence Malick. The author makes this convincing, with deadpan aplomb. Leonard's characters even compose lines for themselves. (What follows may deserve a "spoiler warning," but, on the other hand, Leonard's plots twist so much. . . .) Planning to kill a man she has had very good times with in bed, Dawn Navarro has a story conference with herself about dialogue: "She'd fire without cocking it. Unless she might have a few things to say first. Then cock the gun for effect, just before she says, 'So long, Jack, it's been . . . "'Fun?' "A ball?' "'It's been nice knowing you.' "She said, 'It's been nice knowing you?' "She said, 'It was nice taking showers with you.' "She was making it hard, trying to think instead of just saying it. How about, 'I love you, Jack, but you're no six-million-dollar man.' That wasn't bad. He'd get it." Here the proposed murder victim is conceived by his would-be killer as an audience, and the possibilities of language get more attention than the weapon. In a similar way, Jack's thoughts when he's about to have sex with a recently widowed movie star, or not, resemble those of a screenwriter. At poolside, after a dip, about to change clothes, she has said, "I've been thinking. I might be rushing my return to the world": "He turned to look at her and said, 'I know,' nodding, showing he was wise as well as patient. He thought he might as well continue once he started, get it all out, and said, 'I understand.' He said there was no reason to hurry, it would work out or it wouldn't. They liked each other and they'd get to it one day. The way he said it was, 'We'll express our love one day,' and thought he should have said 'show our love,' but didn't like that either. He should've said, they'd get to it, with a grin, and let it go at that." This Clooney-looking bank robber has the soul of a writer. Possibly, he's more interested in sounding precisely as cool as possible than he is in ordinary seduction. Possibly, character and author both are conceding vulnerability. (Even when Leonard stoops to trite plot devices, like the unloaded gun, he has a disarming way of seeming to smirk at the reader above the cliché.) Having characters think about fine details of speech before engaging in sex or violence isn't merely a prank or indulgence. In a story about trust and betrayal, the hyper-intense attention to nuances of dialogue not only fits: it's a matter of survival. The weird alertness of characters and narrators also includes a director's eye for facial expressions. A Leonard character thinks like this: "But she didn't work her eyes on him as he thanked her." Another sentence about communication without words, always involving some element of trust or its opposite : "He looked at Foley, who gave his buddy a tired smile." When Dawn ends a speech with the words "I trust you, Jack," his response is "You make it sound easy." "Road Dogs," in its moral as in its physical setting, occupies the same territory as the very old joke about. "How do you say (insert two-syllable insult) in Los Angeles?" (For the few who don't know the answer: "Trust me.") Leonard keeps his fight scenes quick and understated, and they too involve cons and trickery. They also involve games: some one-on-one basketball that turns violent in an unexpected way; a kind of one-on-one dodgeball with one player's heels at the edge of a flat roof, high enough for a mistake to be fatal. Both scenes recall the reason certain kinds of deception are called confidence games. At the novel's beginning, Cundo and Foley are best friends in prison, with Cundo scheduled for release soon and Foley not. Cundo pays $30,000 for a super-good lady lawyer to spring his friend, who gets out first. Will Cundo expect something from Foley, probably something criminal, in return? Or can Foley trust the gesture of friendship? Will Dawn be faithful? Will Foley sleep with the widowed movie star? And so forth, with many a twist and some terrific minor characters. Do love, friendship and loyalty exist? Elmore Leonard's answer, entertainingly worked out as narrative, appears to be "possibly so" - or maybe it's "in a manner of speaking." Robert Pinsky's latest book, "Essential Pleasures: A New Anthology of Poems to Read Aloud," has just been published.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* It's homecoming for a handful of Leonard's most entertaining characters. When last seen, all-world bank robber Jack Foley was getting shot by his lover, U.S. Marshal Karen Sisco, at the end of Out of Sight (1996); bent fortune teller Dawn Navarro was riding shotgun alongside another marshal, Raylan Givens, the Shane of South Beach, in Riding the Rap (1995); and Cundo Rey was a go-go dancer, also in South Beach, before getting shot by a secret-service agent turned photographer in LaBrava (1983). Now Jack and Cundo are finishing up stretches of jail time in Florida, while Dawn, Cundo's sort-of wife, awaits his return in Venice, California. It's the perfect setup for one of Leonard's tragicomic screwball capers in which fast-talking, lovable but lethal con men (and women) try to outthink each other, avoid getting killed, and steal whatever there is to steal. Not a whole lot happens here except for a couple of bursts of violence in the midst of the high jinks (a classic Leonard ploy) but it's full of wonderful banter and the kind of back-and-forthing between characters out to double- and triple-cross each other that Ross Thomas used to do so well in his Woo and Durant novels. And, of course, there's California's canal-strewn version of Venice a setting tailor-made for Leonard's ability to match funky landscapes to offbeat characters. Reading isn't supposed to be this much fun.--Ott, Bill Copyright 2009 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Leonard launches three characters from previous novels on a collision course in this seemingly effortless performance. After prison buddy Cundo Rey (last seen in LaBrava) drops a bundle on a shark attorney, celebrity bank robber Jack Foley (from Out of Sight) gets his 30-year prison sentence reduced to 30 months. Jack's quickly back in the world, living large in one of Cundo's two multimillion-dollar houses in Venice, Calif., juggling a fast seduction with fortune-teller (from Riding the Rap) Dawn Navarro (who is now Cundo's lady) and the untoward attention of rogue FBI agent Lou Adams, who's waiting for Foley to rob another bank. While Dawn tries to enlist Foley in a scheme to steal Cundo's off-the-books fortune, Cundo surprises them with an early release. Betrayal simmers while Foley considers going semi-straight-with the help of a widowed starlet-Dawn hatches a plan that could get her rich and rid her of all her problems, and Cundo's associates and neighborhood toughs get sucked into the fray. The plot isn't as tight as it could be, but Leonard's singular way with words is reason enough to read it. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Road dogs are prison buddies who watch each other's backs. Jack Foley and Cundo Rey are trying to maintain that loyalty after they get out and start anew in Venice, CA, where Rey's girl Dawn Navarro awaits. Leonard (Up in Honey's Room) brings back old favorites Foley and Rey, Dawn, and Karen Sisco-smart, sexy women and clever con artists, a mix the author knows well. Foley is being dogged by a rogue FBI agent who's convinced the infamous gentleman bank robber will strike again, and Rey's financial partner, Little Jimmy, is secretly in love with Dawn. The grifters' game of moving parts is quietly intriguing, but it never generates enough steam. This is Foley's story, and one can envision the movie already-his character was irresistible in Out of Sight. But there aren't enough capers or plot twists to make this one of the author's best. Leonard fans will be content, but steer newbies to Out of Sight or Tishomingo Blues. Expect high demand and buy accordingly, but be moderate in your enthusiasm. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 1/09.]-Teresa L. Jacobsen, Solano Cty. Lib., Fairfield, CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Leonard throws together three battle-hardened survivors from his earlier capers, with predictably unpredictable results. Jack Foley (Out of Sight, 1996) robbed numerous banks before an amateurish mistake and a run-in with Bob Isom Gibbs, aka Maximum Bob, got him sent to prison for a 30-year stretch. There he meets Cundo Rey (LaBrava, 1983), the four-time killer from Cuba whose debt to society is much shorter. The two felons bond over the manifest injustice of Jack's disproportionate sentence, and soon Cundo's hooked Jack up with his smart-chick lawyer Megan Norris, who gets Jack's sentence knocked down to 30 months less time served. As a result, he gets to go home before Cundo, and the home he goes to is one of the two houses psychic Dawn Navarro (Riding the Rap, 1995) keeps for Cundo. Despite his FBI nemesis Lou Adams's certainty that Jack will rob another bank within a month, Jack and Cundo have their sights set higher than one more $5,000 score. They plan to insinuate Jack into Dawn's business, beginning with her high-value deal to free movie star Danialle Karmanos from the oppressive ghost of her late movie-producer husband. Even before Jack's met and charmed the susceptible Danny, he's already insinuated himself between Dawn's sheets, establishing himself as more than her business partner just in time to welcome Cundo back home. It's clear from the get-go that the real action here won't be the scam of Danny Karmanos but the drolly straight-faced efforts of the three co-conspirators to increase their share of the pot by reducing their numbers. Yet although the double-crosses are the stuff of the master's best work, they come across as telegraphic and obligatory, as if the tale were a sketch for a more full-blooded novel. What works best are the matchless incidental pleasures Leonard's world always provides, from lightning-fast descriptions to bull's-eye dialogue, as when Cundo complains about Dawn's nagging: "Eight years inside I dream about her. I come out, she acts like she's my wife." Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
