FICTION
Well-loved characters return in Elmore Leonard’s latest
For a half century, Elmore Leonard has surprised readers with characters that are hard to forget.
Leonard’s masterful powers of terse description let them rise from the page. His trademark dialogue — terse, canny, chockablock with screenplay-ready moments — has them breathing in your ear.
But there are other good writers.
Where the old master truly outshines his peers is his deft touch at building, loading and springing a good surprise. Leonard’s readers can never be too sure how his collection of criminals, schemers and officers of the law will deal out the ending.
So it’s hardly shocking that “Road Dogs,” Leonard’s 43rd novel, is a surprising book. Elmore Leonard has delivered an elegant jewelbox of caper fiction, with seamlessly dovetailed stories of well-loved back-catalog characters and an ending that closes with a satisfying click.
Hollywood has taken Leonard’s characters on as a mini-industry. Robert DeNiro, George Clooney and John Travolta play his guys. He could pump out anything under his name and see it land on the best-seller lists, filling the airport racks.
In that context, “Road Dogs” surprises on another level. He might be 83, but Leonard’s story doesn’t mosey. It accelerates, no wasted steps, pulls off back-flips and twists, then sticks the landing.
It starts in a Florida prison, where veteran bank robber Jack Foley (played by Clooney in “Out of Sight”) is doing time with Cundo Rey, the little Cuban killer shot by the title character in “LaBrava.”
Foley, known inside for robbing over 100 banks without a gun, gets some guys to leave Rey alone. Rey pays the hotshot lawyer who gets Foley out of doing 30 years, and sends Foley to one of his houses near Venice Beach after Foley gets out. Waiting for him is Dawn Navarro, the fortune-telling grifter bombshell from “Riding the Rap.”
Rey calls Dawn his wife, and has his men watching to make sure she’s not cheating on him. When Foley arrives, Dawn makes clear that Rey’s men haven’t been watching all that well, and pulls the ex-con into bed.
Dawn tells the bank robber they’re soulmates. She has an idea for Foley’s next job. It’ll make them rich, and erase Foley’s jailhouse debt.
Not a bank. Knock off his friend Rey.
So it’s a quarter of the way into the story, and everybody’s got a side game, lining up their own kill. Maybe Leonard’s musing about trust, and how hard it is to preserve. Or maybe he’s just using the scent of consensual betrayal to amp up the tension, heading for the big showdown. Either way, in Leonard’s sure hands, this old fiddle sings.
Leonard adds a handful of new faces to the story, each with a part to play as the watch winds down.
A divorced FBI agent has hung his hopes on busting Foley after the inevitable next robbery, providing the last chapter of the agent’s memoirs. Foley gets into it with the FBI agent when they meet on a Venice sidewalk.
“Going down for 30 years opened my eyes,” Foley said.
“But a little late, huh? I’d like to put that statement in the
book, I think near the end. Have it come right after I tell how I busted your ass back to federal prison, I imagine for life.”
Foley said, “Lou, the day you die of being a failure, I’ll do one last bank in your memory. I’ll say to the teller, ‘Sweetheart, this one’s for that dumb but dedicated Special Agent Lou Adams.’ ”
A beautiful movie star widow finds herself charmed by Foley while pretending to rid her house of ghosts. Rey’s lieutenant, a Cuban dandy named Little Jimmy who runs his criminal operation, is gay but goes to confession when he’s afraid he might get whacked. Leonard’s playfulness emerges when Little Jimmy tells the priest he prefers men.
“Up to this time you’ve been chaste?” the priest asks.
“You mean, Father, by dudes? If I like the guy, he doesn’t have to chase me.”
As Leonard wraps the threads of his story around his fist to hammer home the ending, and the characters left standing decide how much they want to be criminals, he gives Foley the jailbird the pulpit for a fleeting second.
“It’s what happens,” Foley said, “in the life. You go down.”
Elmore Leonard is lapping the field.
Road Dogs By Elmore Leonard
William Morrow 262 pages, $27
Andrew Z. Galarneau is the News’ Food writer and feature reporter.
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