Novels

The Hot Kid

Publisher: New York : William Morrow/ Avon: 2005
Edition: First Edition
Format: Hardcover
Pages: Pages 288
Original Price: $25.95
ISBN: : 0060724226
Genre: Crime/Period (Prohibition Era)
Locations:Oklahoma, Tulsa, Okmulgee; Kansas City
Special Notes: Publication Date: May 10, 2005
Characters:

Slick cars, speakeasies, bank robbers and shoot outs are the game in this vigorously entertaining new book from Elmore Leonard, the undisputed master of the crime novel. Set in Oklahoma during the 20s and 30s, THE HOT KID (William Morrow; On Sale May 10, 2005) opens with fifteen-year-old Carlos Webster witnessing a     robbery and killing at Deering’s     drugstore.  When the robber, a notorious outlaw named Emmet Long, takes a bite out of the kid’s peach ice cream cone and calls him a “greaser,” his fate is sealed. 

At twenty-one, Carl Webster’s on his way to becoming the most famous Deputy U.S. Marshal in America. He’s shot and killed Emmet Long and is now tracking Jack Belmont, the no-good son of an oil millionaire with dreams of becoming Public Enemy Number One. True Detective writer Tony Antonelli is following the story, and this one’s big, full of beautiful women, Tommy guns and a former lawman who believes in vigilante justice.

With dialogue that crackles, characters who jump off the page, and a sexy and evocative setting,  THE HOT KID is a joy ride with a plot that is pure perfection.  Unlike Leonard’s previous works, where the stories take place over a short time span—two to three weeks at the most—THE HOT KID plays out over the course of thirteen years during one of the most exhilarating eras in our history—with one big war behind us and one still ahead, in a world of outlaws, flappers, gun molls and Prohibition