Synopses & Reviews
Loan shark Chili Palmer didn't say anything when Ray Bones stole his leather jacket from Vesuvio's in Miami. He just went to Ray's house, broke his nose, took the jacket, and left. Twelve years later, on account of his boss getting whacked, Chili finds himself working for Bones and ordered to collect on a bad debt from Leo Devoe, a guy who died in a plane crash. But it turns out Leo isn't dead; he's in Las Vegas with the $300,000 the airline paid to his wife. So Chili follows him to Vegas and then on to Hollywood, where he hooks up with movie producers, actors, and studio execs. Getting Leo becomes a movie pitch unfolding in a city where every move you make is a potential scene, and making it big isn't all that different from making your bones: You gotta know who to pitch, who to hit, and how to knock 'em dead.
Review
"[R]oundly satisfying....A perfect resolution puts punch in the title and will keep readers smiling for days. Chili and his story are Leonard's best yet." Publishers Weekly
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"One of the most hilarious and cynical Hollywood revenge novels ever written." Playboy
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"The greatest crime writer of our time, perhaps ever!" The New York Times Book Review
Review
"A good rootin'-tootin' Elmore Leonard adventure with the usual suspects, the locker full of money, the wheelers, the dealers, the crazies, and the girl. Get Shorty gets Hollywood right where it lives and the joke is so funny, so infinitely tricky, so perfectly synchronized on so many levels that it's apt to make you spin." Chicago Tribune
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"The funniest crime thriller ever set among the hustlers and con artists of the movie colony." The Wall Street Journal
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"Get Shorty is not red-tomato Leonard. Its plot within a plot...moves at a surprisingly slow speed, and there is little of the tension that made Killshot and Glitz almost unbearable." Whitney Balliett, The New Yorker
Review
"An absolute master." The Detroit News
Synopsis
Mob-connected loanshark Chili Palmer is sick of the Miami grind plus his "friends" have a bad habit of dying there. So when he chases a deadbeat client out to Hollywood, Chili figures he might like to stay. This town with its dreammakers, glitter, hucksters, and liars plus gorgeous, partially clad would-be starlets everywhere you look seems ideal for an enterprising criminal with a taste for the cinematic. Besides, Chili's got an idea for a "killer movie" though it could very possibly kill him to get it made.
Synopsis
“A Hollywood hit….Taut, inimitable prose and characters who could have only sprung from the mind of Elmore Leonard.”
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Detroit NewsThe Chicago Tribune has dubbed Elmore Leonard, “the coolest, hottest writer in America.” In the same league as the legendary great ones—John D. MacDonald, Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain—the “King Daddy of crime writers” (Seattle Times) demonstrates his remarkable mastery with Get Shorty, one of the most adored of his forty-plus novels. The basis of the hit movie starring John Travolta and Danny DeVito, Get Shorty chronicles the over-the-top, sometimes violent Hollywood misadventures of a Florida mob loan shark who chases a deadbeat client all the way to Tinseltown and decides to stick around and make movies. Get Shortys shylock protagonist, Chili Palmer, is a truly inspired creation—as memorable as another unforgettable Leonard hero, U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens of the hit TV series Justified—and readers will relish his moves and countermoves in this electrifying, funny, bullet train-paced winner from “the greatest crime writer of our time, perhaps ever!” (New York Times Book Review)
About the Author
Elmore Leonard wrote forty-five novels and nearly as many western and crime short stories across his highly successful career that spanned more than six decades. Some of his bestsellers include Road Dogs, Up in Honeys Room, The Hot Kid, Mr. Paradise, Tishomingo Blues, and the critically acclaimed collection of short stories Fire in the Hole. Many of his books have been made into movies, including Get Shorty, Out of Sight, and Rum Punch, which became Quentin Tarantinos Jackie Brown. Justified, the hit series from FX, is based on Leonards character Raylan Givens, who appears in Riding the Rap, Pronto, Raylan and the short story “Fire in the Hole”. He was a recipient of the National Book Foundations Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the Lifetime Achievement Award from PEN USA, and the Grand Master Award of the Mystery Writers of America. He was known to many as the ‘Dickens of Detroit and was a long-time resident of the Detroit area.