Win Pronto (Raylan Givens, #1) Formulated By Elmore Leonard Represented In Digital Copy
get one thing out at the start, This isn't the Raylan Givens that you have come to know through the FX
TV show,
This is a typical wry riff on the criminal element by Leonard, Givens doesn't appear for a while and, when he does, he's the butt of a joke about a U, S. Marshall not being able to hang on to a man he is supposed to protect,
As the story progresses, we travel from Miami Beach to Italy and get the full "fish out of water" treatment, We learn a lot about Raylan much of it at variance with the TV show, He is divorced without the custody of his two kids and had been "demoted" to a weapons instructor at the Marshals training facility for several years,
Lots of cute/weird characters, mostly of the criminal element keep this interesting, but not exceptional. .
Stars
I'm not impressed, It's like a short story padded with tons of useless dialogue,
As usual with my reviews, please first read the publishers blurb/summary of the book, Thank you.
Leonard's dialogue is overstuffed, verbose and doesn't often advance the plot or reveal more of the character speaking, He also describes scenes and settings extensively, but not in an interesting or revealing way,
The character Harry Arno is quite irritating and indecisive, The plot plods along, boringly, but with moments of good action, well told,
Raylan comes across as independentminded, mostly honest and highly skilled, yet his detection is pretty dull,
Harry talks constantly about the famous poet Ezra Pound, his wife Dorothy and his mistress Olga, Harry had met them several times during and after WW, In some ways the Ezra Pound history is more entertaining than the main plot,
Dorothy Shakespear, Ezra's wife
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Olga Rudge, the mistress
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Ezra Pound
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All in all, a pretty dull book.
I'm going to read more of the series, but bookdoesn't seem much better,
Leonard is not much of a philosopher, so they're not many quotes,
Notes and quotes:
October, Harry would remember, he had vegetable soup, a few crackers, iced tea, and the JellO, strawberry, Stepped out into the sunlight in his beige warmups with the red piping, his Reeboks, and there was Buck Torres standing by an unmarked car, a blue 'Caprice.
Harry had been arrested by Buck Torres a halfdozen times or so they knew each other pretty well and were friends, Not socially, Harry had never met Buck's wife, but friends in the way they trusted one another and always had time to talk about other things than what they did for a living.
Buck Torres had never asked Harry about his business with Jimmy Capotorto, trying to get to Jimmy Cap through Harry,
He asked about guys who ran these clubs hitting on her, She told Harry they weren't her type, As Joy she'd open her act with Led Zeppelin's "Black Dog," do funky moves to the intricate guitar riffs between the lyrics and get the room's attention fast.
Her glasses would slip and she'd push them back up while she danced, The idea was not to look too professional,
Joyce said, "You know what happens when you play a country tune backwards You get your girl and your truck back, you're not drunk anymore and your hound dog comes back to life.
" She said, "I was born in Nashville, "
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I can't believe this was the first Elmore Leonard novel I'd read, What's wrong with me It took the show 'Justified' to convince me that I needed to give him a shot, After all, his character Raylan Givens is one of the most uniquely original protagonists in the last decade of television dramas,
This is the first full book featuring Federal Marshall Raylan Givens and it did not disappoint, Leonard is a master story teller whose characters are so incredibly flawed that you can't help be drawn in by their idiosyncrasies, This book has all the gun play and witty banter that I've come to love from 'Justified', I can't wait to read the next book in the Raylan series, and every other book Leonard has written, Elmore Leonard is my secondfavorite author next to Stephen King, Given no pun intended! that fact, that I loved Pronto will come as no surprise, What is surprising is how deftly Leonard switches settings in this tale, We begin in Miami, head over to Italy for a substantial chunk of the novel, then return to Miami, And all the while, Leonard is juggling characters, their motivations, and their desires, Making this juggling act an even greater feat is the fact that the characters' motivations and desires are constantly shifting,
Raylan Givens is our hero what struck me about him was how fallible he was early in the novel, With a lesser writer, Raylan's metamorphosis into a gritty, witty hero would seem implausible at best however, because Leonard repeatedly demonstrates Raylan's inherent kindnessand more importantly, his willingness to trust others and forgive them for their sinswe come to understand that Raylan doesn't really metamorphose as much as he simply learns from his mistakes and digs down deep to find a better version of himself.
Yes, he is a changer, but he's not a transformer unless you count the way he transforms an exstripper named Joyce into a person who wants more than the lot for which she has previously settled.
I'll stop now before I give too much away, but in conclusion I'll say that while this novel wasn't my favorite Leonard book, it easily deserves its five.
Leonard writes better stuff in his sleep than most writers do when surcharged with Red Bull, coffee, and a head full of writing rules, Dutch is a national treasure! This is a great introduction to Raylan amp ends about where the TV series 'Justified' begins, although there was quite a change for TV.
Still, the basics are there amp it paints a thorough picture of Raylan's personality, He's a wonderful character, too, His laconic yet tenacious style coupled with a twisty, thrilling plot is so satisfying,
As an audio book, it was pretty well read, The reader did some voices amp all were intelligible yet distinct amp fit the characters well, He did rush breaks, but I'm not sure if that was him or the production company's editing, I really hate that, though, At the end of a chapter or section, there should be a couple of seconds to break, but here "Chapter Twelve" or whatever comes so fast after the last word in chapterthat it's almost painful.
This was another download from my local library, I can't thank them enough for making so many hours of entertainment available, Did I read the same book as everyone else After hearing about Leonard's supposed "mastery" of the hardboiled crime genre, I picked this one up expecting plenty of twists, turns, and action.
Instead, I found myself reading page after page of dull dialogue, They go to a restaurant and talk, Then they go to Italy and talk in cafes, Then they talk in a villa, The plot is so simple and the action so scarce that one must wonder if Leonard is simply bored with his own work, I can imagine the author being vaguely interested in Ezra Pound's time in Italy, so he shoehorns it in here as much as he can, None of what actually does happen is particularly exciting, with the minor exception of the somewhat anticlimactic final "shootout", The character of Givens may be somewhat interesting, but his motivations for doing some absurd things are never really explained, and his love interest comes seemingly out of nowhere.
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