Cat Chaser

Pageturning at it's most compulsive. Elmore Leonard returns to South Florida for another twisted tale of greed, death and love set in a world of ex-marines, ex-Generals, gangsters and a variety of lowlifes. Yet again, Mr. Leonard's plot and dialogue are scarily believable; I fear he knows more than he lets on!

I think Leonard is still cranking out good stuff, but if you want to catch Leonard before the serious buzz started to attach to him, Cat Chaser is a great place to start. George Moran, ex-Marine, ex-Detroit native, and owner of the Coconut Palms Resort Apartments, is like so many heroes in Leonard's world, a guy looking at middle-age who, nevertheless, holds to a personal code, even as he stands at crossroad that has him looking back and looking forward, while sharks snap all around. With his moral compass intact, he always seems to know what to do in any situation, even if he makes it up as he goes along. Enter another ex-grunt and ex-actor Nolan Tyner (who is a dead ringer for Owen Wilson - 15 years before Wilson even appeared in a movie!), who is now an alcoholic private investigator staked out at pool side, and things start to happen. Oh, there's a lady that needs saving, Mary de Boya. Like Moran, she's an ex-Detroit native and, complicating things, wife to a former torturer from a south American country and now Florida real estate magnate, Andres de Boya. There's another bad guy named Jiggs Scully, who is lethally memorable - even by Leonard's villain-meter. And, of course, a lot of money under the torturer's bed , and page after page of great dialogue. (As a subplot, it's very interesting to see who is the most dangerous bad guy - de Boya or Scully, their conversations together were for me the high points of the novel. Two killers playing chess.) To tell you more would be to cheat you a bit.

With the exception of a princess phone and a couple of black and white TVs,Elmore Leonard's 1982 "Cat Chaser" is as contemporary as today's paper.It is well crafted, full of the usual Leonard streetwise, quirky characters. One con artist after another trying to out con the other. Escapist reading at its best.

When you get caught up reading a writer's work there's always one selection that always stands out. CAT CHASER is mine. The characters, the dialogue, the location (you can see where he got Cuba Libre from) all fit together like a favorite quilt you just can't get rid of. It's the hero who decides it's time to do it one more time. Maybe not for the woman, but just out of curosity. A plot worth reading and a hero as cool as LaBrava or Chili Palmer.

Elmore Leonards characters and story are brilliant and original in this story of a man getting mixed up with some bad dominicans/a rich mans wife and some private detectives.