Elmore Leonard is over 80 and I've just got around to reading my first novel by him. Get Shorty and Jackie Brown were both based on his work, so it was about time I read him. Freaky Deaky is a cops and robbers novel that is amazingly well written. It moves so fast that you need to take time to appreciate the craft. There is no message and the characters are all various shades of pond scum, but they are well drawn and rounded. The plot is preposterous, but it hangs together and you could really believe it happening in such an exotic place as Detroit.
Detroit exotic? Hey, to a resident of sleepy old Bournemouth Detroit is exotic.
The characters are all left-overs from the sixties; still doing grass and acid. Even those with straight jobs have been left with a hanker after devilment. In a way, the characters all get what they deserve, so there is a pleasant sense of completeness when you finish it. What's nice about it is to enter the thinking of one character after another and watch each of them develop of strategy that trumps the last one.
Will I read another? Probably not, at least for a while. AW Tozer was once asked his reading strategy. "Don't read good books," he said. "There's not enough time." Read only great books."
Freaky Deaky was a good book.
Dr. Hamblin:
ReplyDeleteI read with interest your comments on Elmore Leonard and his writing. I was born and raised in Detroit. Freaky Deaky and get shorty are the only two I have read. I love your comment about exotic Detroit! One more thing, I am also a CLL'r.
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