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Elmore Leonard Website

Friday, December 21, 2007

Herald Sun (Australia)
Honey is queen bee
BYLINE: SUSANNAH GODDARD

HIS is a familiar name to anyone who’s perused a bookshop in the past couple of decades.

Even for non-readers, the popular films based on his prolific writings, such as Get Shorty, Jackie Brown and Out of Sight, have made Elmore Leonard a major name.

Despite this ubiquity I realised with some surprise that I’ve never actually read any of his novels. So what better place to start than with his 43rd and latest?

Leonard brings together a marshal from Oklahoma, a few Nazis, a Ukrainian countess and her transvestite personal attendant, the FBI and a heroine with the Bond-like name of Honey Deal, as in honey of a deal, presumably.

This unlikely cast is in Detroit in the last days of World War II. Two German prisoners-of-war on the lam are being sheltered by a group of inept spies.

One of the group is cooking up a plan to make him famous enough to cast even Himmler, whom he suspects of being his twin, into obscurity.

It is a world where the dames are smart and sassy and not averse to a little nudity.

The men are in homburgs and lung cancer doesn’t seem to be a blip on anyone’s radar.

For some reason the dialogue with all its non-sequiturs seems to compel you to read it in a Humphrey Bogart drawl.

Leonard recycles a few characters. Hero of The Hot Kid, Marshal Carl Webster and his dad Virgil, another hero from Cuba Libre, return in this black-and-white movie world. Carl’s a laconic man of his word, trying hard to remember his wedding vows as the nonchalant Honey and her assets enter rooms with memorable lines such as ``Seig Heil, y’all, I’m Honey Deal’‘.

Despite the plot not really ever going anywhere, it’s a quirkily addictive read. Don’t try to analyse it too much—just give in and enjoy the ride.