Leonard - The Big Bounce

The Big Bounce, Elmore Leonard, Fawcett, 1969.

Jack Ryan is a minor criminal arrested for a fight at a pick-up baseball game. Local Justice of the Peace Mr Majestic is a baseball fan, and on the possibility hes opponent carried a knife, Jack is released with no charges laid. Ryan is a former baseball prospect who never quite made it to the pros. His bosses, now his ex bosses, at the melon plantation where he worked order Ryan to leave town. Mr. Majestic offers Ryan a job as handyman at his beach front cabanas. Ryan decides to stay. He takes the lead in a break in to steal wallets from a party with two accomplices, then takes the job with Mr. Majestic.

He meets Nancy, a young mistress of a local millionaire. She is a master manipulator, perhaps even better than Jack. She tempts Jack into a robbery of her lover's payroll. But Jack is also tempted to live on the right side of the law. Then his partners in his last job return, and his former employer finds out he has not left town. The complications build in an easy-going fashion which matches Jack's personality and approach. The plot moves swiftly, while the emphasis is on character.

This is an early Leonard crime story and one of his best. His writing shows the style he is known for, practiced in his westerns, but we also see the signs of a younger Leonard still developing his technique. The dialogue style is there, the basic yet swift plot, the scenarios and complications which build one on the other. There is also a reliance on long flashbacks as a method to develop character. It is not something I have noticed in other Leonard novels. It works fine here as we get long looks into both Jack's and Nancy's past. But it is something the later Leonard would not do. The only sub-plot that does not work is that of the young woman in the cabin who takes an apparent interest in Ryan and who he thinks wants to seduce him. That entire scenario falls flat.

The various threads and characters come together very cleverly for the finale, which ends in a perhaps mildly ambiguous conclusion, like this sentence, but remains true to the characters and is in that very satisfying.

MacDonald - The Green Ripper

The Green Ripper, John D MacDonald, Fawcett Gold Medal, 1979.

Some books from earlier eras age very well, every bit as readable as when they were written, some even find a more appreciative audience many years after the first publication. But while looking through a few books in the Travis McGee series, I became worried that this highly regarded series would seem dated. I looked for one of the more recent books, one that was also mentioned in places as one of the best. I picked up this one, not sure if it met the second criteria, but it met the first.
I suspect it was more of a sensation when first published. It is, for better or worse, very much in the style of much 70's adventure fiction. The characters talk a great deal, they follow leads and uncover a few facts which lead them somewhere else. In this case a female character is introduced as McGee's latest girlfriend, and of course we read how awesome she is, McGee wants to marry her. Then very quickly she is killed off. McGee wants revenge. She was, it is obvious, killed off by a cult. In the seventies cults probably seemed even more mysterious and weird than they do now. Today they are a familiar menace, then they were a new menace. Anyway, McGee spends most of the book following leads, discovering that government agents are also after this cult, and not much else.
Finally McGee decides to join the cult as a way of finding out who killed his girlfriend and then killing them. Luckily for McGee, the group he joins are not regular cult members, they are part of some special cult militia getting military training. Either the author did not know about cult brainwashing techniques, or he ignored them. Just their possibility makes joining a cult to get information a very stupid idea. But the hero is lucky, this section of the cult is a military section.
McGee is told he cannot leave, but is allowed to wander around the base/ compound and ask any questions he pleases and have them fully answered. They even give him a woman to - well I am not sure what she is supposed to be doing, watch him perhaps, but her author-purpose is to supply sex scenes and give plot information. The absurdity builds until the action finale.
This novel is silly really, and I hope not an example of the Travis McGee greatness which so many write about, because this book certainly isn't.

Tosches - Cut Numbers

Cut Numbers. Nick Tosches. Back Bay Books (Little, Brown, and Co.) 2001.
Tosches tells a parallel story of two characters. Both are hard men living on the fringes of crime. They know the big hitters in the crime world, but live and work in the margins. One is Louis, a shylock, handing out loans and collecting payments every week. The other is Joe Brusher, a killer. Their two stories run separately, and involve some of the same supporting players, but they never meet.

Each man is approaching middle-age, feeling the years of effort, and the lack of success. Both welcome a chance to make their fortunes. Louis especially can barely make a living, fights with his girlfriend, and feels the effects of a gangster mid-life crisis.

The novel is rich in colorful, realistic characters, gritty dialogue, and believable detail on the life of low - level crooks. Joe makes a good menacing figure, and we do get some of his point of view. But it is Louie who is the main character. We spend more time with him, get most of the story through his eyes. He is not always a likable character, but Tosches makes him a sympathetic one.

Ellis - The Informers

The Informers. Brett Easton Ellis. Vintage. 1994.
Ellis's 'The Informers' is actually a collection of short stories, one per chapter; but he purposefully writes them all in the first person and rarely or never gives the narrator a name, so the stories blend together in an esoteric, impressionistic, crazy way. College kids talking of a dead friend, the unhappy wife of a movie mogul, a serial killer, and so on. The chapter-stories move one to the other like a prose form of an old-school punk rock performance.

Nersesian - Chinese Takeout

Chinese Takeout Arthur Nersesian, Perennial, 2003.
Orloff Trenchant is a painter living in his van, hustling paintings to art dealers, selling books at a sidewalk stand, and failing at his relationships with women.
Orloff basically has three relationships as the book progresses. The first ends quickly, the second occupies most of the book, and the third seems like a backup that is there when needed. The dialogue often sounds unnatural, and the plotting is a little shakey; Orloff's paranoia and foolish decisions seem meant as humorous and as drama at the same time, but end up being neither.
Where the book succeeds is in it's depiction of setting. The knowledge of the Chinatown area, its history, its streets and places, is colorful and thorough and always engaging. Also the small things are done well: the street of book vendors, the scene where Orloff takes down street signs and substitutes ads about himself, and so on. These portions of the book make it a good read.