Country: USA
Genre: Crime
Pages: 373
Harry Arno believed he was a hip guy; he kept up, didn't feel anywhere near sixty-six, knew Vanilla Ice was a white guy; he still had his hair, parted it on the right side and had it touched up every other week where he got his hair cut, up on Arthur Godfrey Road.
I do not know any crime fiction reader who openly dislikes Elmore Leonard. Also, I do not know any reader who swears by the one we call Dutch and by him only. His professional sports equivalent would be a very talented role player. Two-way center player Rod Brind'Amour in hockey or Oklahoma City's shooting guard Thabo Sefolosha, for example. He's amazing at what he does, but what he does is a very precise thing. Humor-laced crime fiction *. You have to be in a certain mood to read that. The stars aligned for me, though and I picked up PRONTO, curious about the inception of Raylan Givens, now played by Timothy Olyphant in FX hit series Justified. You heard me right, PRONTO is the source material that created television's favorite U.S Marshall. It's where it all began.
The central character in PRONTO isn't Raylan, but sixty-six years old bookmaker Harry Arno, who the feds are trying to turn informant. They're closing down on his boss, Jimmy Capotorto and he could be the last piece of the puzzle, in order to lock the mobster away. He fits the information profile to a tee. He's older, softer and he's got both something to loose and something to hide from Jimmy. But Harry's a tricky guy. He skips out on the feds and vanishes in the wild. It's the second time Raylan Givens loses his trail in five years and this time, he's determined to find him and bring him back. He has an idea where Harry might have disappeared and so does Tommy Bucks, also known as "The Zip", Jimmy Cap's main enforcer, charged with removing Harry from existence. The cards are down, the game is played, now the question is, who will get to Harry first?
Elmore Leonard's fiction had always been character-driven. His plots and intrigues have always been classic to the genre, but his characters paint these stories a unique color. In PRONTO, the baddies run the show. I had a few of those transcendent Elmore Leonard moments where I cracked up out loud, while reading in public, but it was always when the bad guys were on the page. Not only they are majority in PRONTO, but they are really stepping out of the page. Raylan Givens doesn't do much for me. I find him a little linear of a badass. He doesn't talk much, he shoots first and asks questions later, he's divorced. What makes him unique? He wears a cowboy hat? I didn't get any specific flavor to Raylan from reading PRONTO. On the other hand, Tommy Bucks and idiot enforcer Nicky Testa showed the best in Elmore Leonard.
The afternoon of the day following the visit of Joyce Patton, the Zip arranged to have a talk with Nick and brought him out to the lanai, the open sitting room that faced the patio, saying, "Follow me, stronzo." This time calling him an asshole.
"Stronzo," Nicky said, fingers caressing his bare chest," what's that mean, strong? Like referring to how I'm built?"
"Something like that," the Zip said. This guy was so dumb you could say anything you wanted to him.
I often hear the argument Elmore Leonard wrote minimalist prose way before Raymond Carver did and therefore should be credited for the invention of minimalism. I disagree with that. Both men wrote very different material, on an aesthetic level. I'd say if Leonard has to be credited with something, it's for innovating with telegraphic style for crime fiction. There is very little sensory or emotional detail in Leonard's writing. There are facts, dialogue and rock hard reality as Carver created a style which made the everyday life transcendent. They are both champions of realism in their own way, but they couldn't be more different.
PRONTO, like many Elmore Leonard novels, is a good, entertaining book, but there is a visceral elements lacking. I suppose it's what happens when you have so many books published. You end up writing the visceral out of you. It's cool, though. Because Leonard always writes quality material anyway. His characterization is amazing, considering the very small amount of variables he works with. His dialogue reaches levels of accuracy that most writers can only dream of. It's just that the emotional clincher that makes me LOVE a book is not there in PRONTO. Elmore Leonard is a grand master of narrative arts, but this novel is a little dry in terms of reader's emotional involvement. Read it if you like Elmore Leonard or if you like Justified, you will love reading about Raylan Givens' first steps, but it's not exactly an introductory novel to the author.
THREE STARS
* I'm aware Leonard did Westerns too, but he stopped doing them early in his career.