Elmore Leonard's first novel, "The Bounty Hunters," was published in 1953. Fifty-six years later, America's premier literary entertainer is still in business - and business is good. You know from the first sentence that you're in the hands of the original Daddy Cool: "They put Foley and the Cuban together in the backseat of the van and took them from the Palm Beach County Jail . . . to Glades Correctional, the old redbrick prison at the south end of Lake Okeechobee."
Cold, blue steel smile
Starts good; gets a whole lot better.
The main characters in "Road Dogs" are drawn from at least three previous novels, but there's no need to refresh yourself on the Byzantine plots of "Riding the Rap," "La Brava," and "Out of Sight" (which became a successful movie starring George Clooney) to enjoy this one. It's enough to know that Jack Foley's a legendary bank robber with a heart of, if not gold, then some not completely base metal; Cundo Rey is the foxy, hot-blooded Latin who wants to play Jack; and Dawn Navarro is Cundo's sorta wife, steppin' dynamite and several light years from the saint Cundo would like her to be. "You can call me Reverend Dawn, if you like," this untrustworthy honey tells Jack. "I'm an ordained minister of the Spiritualist Assembly of Waco, Texas, though I started out doing nails." It's the perfect Leonard character capsule: succinct and out of the lady's own mouth (although if you start out thinking of Dawn as no more than fuzzy-sexy-dumb, Leonard is going to change your mind - she's a black widow).
Or how about this summation of Rey, as delivered by his old buddy, Jack: "Cundo isn't dumb. He can't add figures, but he knows what the balance is." Aspiring novelists who want to understand that hoary old writing seminar dictum, "Show, don't tell," would do well to save their tuition and read Leonard instead. It's cheaper and a lot more fun.
Speaking of fun, getting there is most of it in a Leonard novel, which means not spoiling the plot (and hey, the strands are never easy to untangle, anyway). I'll tell you a little, because it's too good not to share, but it's probably enough to say that the usual gang of bangers, hustlers, and nut cakes are here, from the FBI agent (Lou Adams) who's obsessed with putting Foley back in jail, to Rey's sexually ambiguous business manager, James "Little Jimmy" Rios, who sees himself the second coming of Tony Montana, the "Scarface" antihero famous for saying, "Lemme innerduce choo to my l'il frien." This is a full and glorious Leonard parade - call it The Seven Deadly Sins Marching Band. Some of these guys will achieve a modicum of decency, but more by accident than design. In Elmore World, long-range planning is always in short supply.
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