Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
Loading... Road Dogs (original 2009; edition 2009)by Elmore Leonard
Work InformationRoad Dogs by Elmore Leonard (2009)
Books Read in 2013 (1,089) Loading...
Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. I read loads of Elmore Leonard's books in my teens and twenties but hadn't picked one up for a while. This was a very enjoyable reminder of why he's as respected as he is - great characters, crackling dialogue and prose as lean and readable as anyone could wish for. ( ) I don't know how this one slipped under my radar. I stumbled across it in a secondhand bookstore. A hardcover Elmore for $4? I'm in. And judging from the cover, I figured it for one of his older books, because I just bought it. I didn't even read what it's about. When it's Elmore Leonard, I don't screw around. He wrote it, I'm going to like it (well, except for his kid's book, A Coyote In The House. Anyway, when I saw he'd actually written this book in 2009, and tied together the three main characters from Out of Sight, La Brava. and Riding The Rap...well damn. Like Lennon said, A splendid time is guaranteed for all. This one's short, with the typical Leonard plot of everyone out to pretty much screw everyone else (literally and figuratively) that he does so damn well and never gets old. But it's full of his amazing characters, fantastic observances and that fantastic dialogue that nobody else can hold a candle to. Damn, I miss Elmore Leonard.
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. Belongs to SeriesCundo Rey (2) Jack Foley (2) Belongs to Publisher SeriesStile libero [Einaudi] (Noir) AwardsDistinctions
Gentleman/banker-robber Jack Foley is back in prison doing a thirty-year sentence after a week-long escape. Brought in by Karen Sisco, US marshall, who got her man after being abducted with the escapees, Jack and Karen have a thing for each other, and Karen arrests him only after a meaningful 'time'out' together. Jack is resigning himself to doing time, lots of it, and he seems to have a friendly and easy control over the hardened criminals he is imprisoned with. This easiness is enhanced in the minds of others by his fame as a bank robber. It is this ease which impresses Cuando Rey, a Cuban refugee and criminal who is doing time for murder. Cuando arranges to have Foley's sentence hugely reduced, but has favors aplenty to ask when they're both released. Cuando's wife, Dawn, is pretending to be saintly all the while (whilst quite the opposite) under the negligent eye of The Monk, a gay accountant similarly in thrall to Cuando. Foley is freed, and, as he fears, Cuando wants to use him on a job, just as his every move is being scrutinised by FBI detective Lou Adams. In an instant, though, Dawn has seduced him, and she has an agenda all of her own. No library descriptions found. |
Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature American literature in English American fiction in English 1900-1999 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |