Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
On the advance reading copy of this novel sent to PW, the title appears in blue letters half an inch high. Leonard's name floats above the title in red letters a full inch high. A Leonard novel is an event, and for good reason. Over the past 40 years, this writer has evolved into the undisputed champ of the American crime novel, and he hasn't lost a step. His new (and 37th) novel is one of his smoothest, a return to the South of Out of Sight (1996) and numerous earlier Leonards though this is the author's first foray into deep country Mississippi, birthplace of the blues. Men and women who scrape at the margins of the American dream are Leonard's forte, and here he presents several such folk, all memorable, beginning with his hero, Dennis Lenahan, a high diver who contracts for a gig to perform at the Tishomingo Lodge and Casino. While setting up his rig, Dennis witnesses a murder by local members of the Dixie Mafia. So, perhaps, does a mysterious, very slick black guy, Robert Johnson, down from the North in his Jag to run a con on a local powerbroker or so it seems. But Robert, who befriends Dennis, and the Detroit mobster and moll who join him at the Lodge and Casino, have other, more complicated, more ambitious plans, for Tishomingo, for the Dixie Mafia and for Dennis, plans that come to a head during the Civil War battle re-enactment that provides the unusual and fascinating backdrop for the book's second half. As usual, Leonard's characters walk onto the page as real as sunlight and shadow; the dialogue is dead-on, the loopy story line strewn with the unexpected, including sudden flourishes of romance and death. Prime Leonard, prime reading. (Feb. 1)Forecast: Backed by a $250,000 marketing campaign and Leonard's ever-soaring rep, this title, his first with Morrow, could be his biggest seller yet, buoyed by a seven-city author tour and simultaneous HarperAudio (abridged and unabridged cassette) and HarperLargePrint editions.(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
No blues here: fans will be delighted to learn that Leonard is back with another raucous tale. Here, when a daredevil diver performing way down South happens to witness a murder by the local Dixie Mafia, he must team with a black gangsta from Detroit to save his skin. (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's 37th backs smooth and easy into Tunica, Mississippi, site of the shaggiest crime tale he's spun since Maximum Bob (1991). Normally, the critical moment in Dennis Lenahan's high dives is the instant his body hits the water. But the final day he's been setting up his rig at Billy Darwin's Tishomingo Lodge & Casino, that moment comes as he hears the two guys he's been watching below execute Floyd Showers, the ex-con who'd been helping him rig the ladders and the perch above. The killers-extortionist Arlen Novis and Junior Owens, who runs Arlen's honky-tonk-look up 80 feet and see him as clearly as he sees them, and although Charlie Hoke, the alleged half-Chickasaw ex-ballplayer who serves as the casino's celebrity host, assures them of Dennis's discretion, there's no doubt that his position in Tunica has been compromised before he's even made his first dive. Dennis needs a friend-somebody like Robert Taylor, the soft-spoken black man whose illustrated patter about how his grandfather was lynched by the great-grandfather of moneyed mobile home salesman Walter Kirkbride is so well-oiled that it's obviously a front for some con Dennis can't identify. What he doesn't need is the attention he catches from dangerous women like newscaster Diane Corrigan-Cochrane, who asks him if it's true that he witnessed Floyd's murder, and Loretta Novis, Arlen's willing wife. And he certainly doesn't need any part of the Civil War reenactment of the battle of Brice's Cross Roads that will sweep him up together with state investigator John Rau and the Dixie Mafiosi he's trying to put away, as Leonard (Pagan Babies, 2000, etc.) revels in layers upon layers of playacting and posturing. Laid-back lowlifes struggle for power, survival, and their 15 minutes of fame in a plot as busy and chaotic as the original battle of Brice's Cross Roads. $250,000 ad/promo; author tour
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.