Road Dogs by Elmore Leonard

I seem to be on an Elmore Leonard kick, this being my third post after Up in Honey's Room and Mr. Paradise. As usual, it is filled with spot on dialogue and colorful characters wrapped up in a fun tale.

Jake Foley is a career bank robber who gets p.o'ed when he is compared to Willie Sutton cuz Jake robbed way more banks. Cundo Rey is a Cuban ex-pat and general all-around criminal. Both are in prison in Florida and watch each other's back - Road Dogs being the phrase for such guys. Cundo pays a lawyer who successfully gets Jack's sentence reduced to essentially time served. Upon release, Jack takes Cundo on his offer and goes to live in Venice Beach where Cundo owns 2 homes (actually the homes are in the name of Cundo's front man). Jack figures, sure, but is worried that he might be beholden to Cundo when he gets released in a couple weeks. But he goes anyway.

In one of the Venice Beach homes, Cundo's girlfriend Dawn has been virtuously waiting 8yrs for Cundo's release (we are led to believe). But she's been planning...planning to kill Cundo, sell the homes, and take off with the profit of the sales-in the $6mill ballpark. She thinks she deserves it because she has waited for Cundo. She needs Jack to spring her plot. But Dawn really shouldn't be trusted. She has a backup plan and enlists a local gangbanger to knock off Jack while enticing this young Costa Rican to think she really cares for him.

Now Cundo isn't the nicest of characters. When he gets out, his first action in Venice Beach is to bed dawn (of course), then on mulitiple occasions punches her lights out and bitches about Dawn not preparing dinner. So, one evening, Dawn fixes dinner, shoots Cundo dead and puts his remains in a freezer. Meanwhile, our Costa Rican gang banger lures Jack on the roof of Dawns house in order to push Jack over the edge, but Jack is smarter than most ordinary gang bangers, tossing his amigo off the roof to his death and interment in said freezer.

As Dawn sees her plan unwinding, she decides to kill Jack her own self, but can't do it when the opportunity presents itself. Jack has figured out Cundo is dead and what Dawn is up to eventually talking her out of murder and most likely into the big house.

Another first rate, talky, crime novel by Leonard. I stumbled across the book that precedes this one at a used bookstore at the airport, but it will probable sit on my nightstand while i catch up on some others. In Road Dogs, are a couple other smaller parts (Jack as a sort of ghostbuster working as Dawn's #2 in her fortune teller swindle and an FBI agent shadowing Jack to catch him in another bank robbery) that added a humorous side plots to the story, but I thought little else. In Leonard's previous book, another Leonard character is introduced that Jack beds-Karen Cisco...remember that TV show? I find Leonard to be enormously entertaining. I'll never get through is entire catalogue, but I can see reading a few more.

East Coast Don