I also picked up this First Edition Elmore Leonard which I re-read with great delight. This may well be his best book, certainly he is at the peak of his powers in this 1989 novel.

I picked this first edition (1973) up at a book sale, and a first edition of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. At the checkout I was amazed to find they charged by the book, three bucks for each hardback. The novel itself seems no better to me than when I found it disappointing in the Seventies. Somewhat like Our Man In Havana, the lead character Fortnum is a drunken honorary consul kidnapped mistakenly for the American Ambassador. Farce leads to tragedy with the usual marital betrayals, in this case the half-English Doctor narrating is betraying the Hon Con (with his ex-hooker wife). Dr. Plarr spends hours talking about God to the defrocked Priest who leads the revolutionary cell. It’s all somehow vaguely silly, and indeed the twist of the end seems false to me, and without tension. It’s the fault of all the damn Catholic discussions. Can’t you just tell a story? Must God come in too. He always ruins everything….

It’s rare for me to read a novel twice within two months but I did this, because I have become addicted to Justified, the brilliant TV series, which I somehow missed first time round, and even missed the fact that it is based on an Elmore Leonard short story, and that he is an Executive Producer. When I noticed that what seems to be Tim Olyphant is on the cover of the book I had to read it again, now with the images of the people from the series in my mind. Leonard often mentions how his characters resemble real actors as a shortcut to describing people in his novels. Anyway I loved it even more.

Doing a little research on Russell, who has kindly consented to be in my Dick. As Steve Martin told him, when we all dined together at Steve’s, he is a remarkable fellow and his book reads very honestly and well. A huge hit too of course. I have it on I Pad and bookshelf.

An extraordinary novel about a man incarcerated in a maximum security prison, how he got there (a fratricide, though it turns out not actually) how he copes with the loss of wife and freedom, how he finds love with a man who escapes by assisting at a Mass when a Cardinal comes in by helicopter. He simply leaves with him. And how eventually he manages to escape the prison to find freedom.

A very fine clean copy First Edition I picked up at Iliad. An almost exquisite short story/novella about a group of people who are all brought into relationships through a toxic pond. Once again the older protagonist Sears seems equally at home in bed with his girlfriend and the janitor. Cheever makes almost no moral judgements about his characters and their habits, which is why his world seems so honest.