Up in Honey’s Room by Elmore Leonard

Elmore Leonard has proved again and again that few of the absurdities of contemporary America have escaped his scrutiny, but in his most recent novels he has been exercising an octogenarian’s privilege and drawing on memories of a period that seems, to most of us, like the remotest history.

Up in Honey’s Room is set in 1945 and sees Carl Webster, the ace manhunter who appeared in Leonard’s previous novel, The Hot Kid (2005), turning up in Detroit to hunt down two escaped German PoWs.

He thinks that the butcher and Himmler-lookalike Walter Schoen may be hiding the men, but soon finds his top priority is deflecting the attentions of Walter’s estranged American wife, Honey - a shame, but then he has “a good-looking wife who’d shot two men in her time”.

As usual, Leonard has you really caring about people who, if you met them in real life, you’d run a mile from. It’s just brilliant.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2007/09/08/bocrime108.xml