Raylan by Elmore Leonard
William Morrow, $26.99, 263 pages, ISBN 978-0-06-211946-9
Whew! I don’t know about you, but after all of that heavy-duty real-crime and religion stuff last week, I’m ready for a change of pace. Something with lots of action . . . where the good guys are good and the women are all pretty and virtuous, the kids polite and smart, and the bad guys are dastardly, have big moustaches and wear black hats . . .
Yeah, sure. I haven’t read books like that since I was nine years old and discovered The Hardy Boys. But . . . I found something as good or better, with clearly defined characters and no moral ambiguity, written for grown-ups.
The novel is titled Raylan by the masterful, and personal favorite of mine, Elmore Leonard. If you’re familiar with the FX Series Justified, you’ve already met Raylan Givens, US Marshal. If not, you’re in for a rare treat. Reading Raylan is just about the most fun an adult can have . . . and still keep their clothes on. I can think of no higher praise.
The novel takes place in eastern Kentucky; in poverty-stricken Harlan County, where the coal mines have laid-off most of the miners, and age and work-related disabilities have sidelined many of the others. Faced with no work and families to care for, many of the men have turned to cultivating marijuana, making Harlan County Kentucky one of the biggest pot-producers in the USA, after Mendicino County in Northern California.
When Marshal Raylan Givens arrives to serve an arrest warrant on Angel Arenas, a wholesale mover of large quantities of dope, he finds Arenas in a motel bathtub filled with ice . . . and fresh incisions where both of his kidneys have been surgically removed; it starts a hunt for the perpetrators that puts his own life, and kidneys, in dire jeopardy.
Filled with the crackling dialogue and wry wit Elmore Leonard is famous for, the novel also comes chock-full of surprises. One of which is that most of the criminals in the book are women. This one’s hard to stop reading. And it’s too good to miss, clothes on or clothes off.
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