I recall someone saying how Elmore Leonard isn't old school `cause he built the school. Very true. My favorite Elmore Leonard novels are Tishomingo Blues and Pagan Babies; Rum Punch is my very favorite, thus this review. Also, in addition to reviewing the book, let me plug the audiobook read by Joe Mantegna. The voice of Joe Mantegna is pitch-perfect, his rhythm and inflections capturing each of the characters, male and female, as well as the mood and charged atmosphere of the entire story.Perha...

Find all of my reviews at: http://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/ 4.5 Stars “My ass may be dumb, but I ain’t no dumbass” – Ordell Robbie Well, call me a dumbass because I had no idea that Rum Punch was the real name for For the past 17 years I’ve been singing the praises of Tarantino’s film – only to find out Elmore Leonard was actually the mastermind behind this product. (In defense of my undying Tarantino love – casting Pam Grier as “Jackie Brown” rather than some rando white broad a...

This is classic Elmore Leonard story telling.Leonard takes the phrase ‘There’s no honour amongst thieves’ and cranks it up more than a few notches. All the characters here are villains. Some are nice and some are down right horrible but they’re all villains just the same.One of the horrible villains, Ordell Robbie, is a gun dealer with a great deal of money banked off shore, $500,000.00. to be exact. He wants to get his hands on his money and with the help of some of his nefarious friends sets u...

Even more resonant and layered than The Switch, but just as compulsively readable and enjoyable, this is Elmore Leonard at his best. He never condescends to his flawed, conniving, desperate, and altogether human characters, and he never tips his hand as to where his twisty plot is headed. It’s a pleasure to know that he was incredibly prolific, and that there are so many more of his novels I have yet to read.

In Rum Punch we revisit characters from Leonard’s earlier novel, Switch, which allows his readers to marvel at the long-term growth of Ordell Robbie, Louis Gara, and Melanie Ralston. Let’s just say that Ordell Robbie becomes a criminal of the type that Quentin Tarantino and Samuel L. Jackson cannot resist depicting in the movie adaptation of this novel, Jackie Brown. Rum Punch is classic Elmore Leonard. The characters are a beehive of activity, each of them trying to manipulate life to their adv...

I finally made it over to my winter stockpile of Rick Bass and was settling in. Getting used to the rhythms of it again (which takes no getting used to at all, for me). Letting the slow, deep, calm, quiet solitude fill up my soul. Then I was housesitting for a few days. There, I watched Jackie Brown. Then, I had to pull out Rum Punch.I thought, oh boy. This can’t work. Rick and Elmore, Bass and Leonard? My two favorites but, so so different. I thought, what if one taints the other? What if one m...

The Flight Attendant And The Bail BondsmanElmore Leonard's novel "Rum Punch" (1992) tells a tangled tale of crime, violence and double-crossing written in a punchy style with sharp dialogue. The plot is confusing to follow at first, but it works out. Most of the story is set in West Palm Beach, Florida; but the setting is not the primary focus of the book. The main interest of the work lies in the snappy writing and in the characters and their relationships.While the book is full of sexual scene...

Unlikeable, un-root-for-able characters, rampant sexism, and not a lick of excitement. Huuuuge disappointment for my first (and likely last) Leonard book.

Just the shit. The absolute shit. Only focused on the characters. And through that focus never wavers from what is important to the story. Plot is squirrelly like life is. As chasing down that squirrelly plot in pursuit of understanding the characters, it gets to be that he’s not writing about characters, he’s writing about people and in doing that he’s not hashing out a plot but unspooling a close knit transcendence above the little life and its maze of lust and guts problems … major writer wri...

After all these years, my first Elmore Leanord book.What a Punch it packs! Narrative form is truly different, even the tense of what someone speaks, and perspective can change in a heartbeat, so effective. The dialogue pops, makes you really see the characters, makes you laugh out loud:    "Man, this shit works on my nerves," Ordell said. "Tells me I should change the plans around. First thing, I have to find somebody to take Simone's place."    "Don't look at me," Louis said.    "I'm not lookin...

4.5A great place to start if you haven't read any Leonard: the Miles Davis of crime writers.

Another of my forays into 'Which is better, the book or the movie?' I hadn't read 'Rum Punch' until now. I had seen 'Jackie Brown' - Quentin Tarantino's adaptation - twice before, but not recently. So I just gave it another look.This one's something of a hard call in terms of 'Which is better?' because, in a way, the question doesn't really apply. Leonard's novel is one of his best. In it, he does what his fans love most about what he does. The story is a well-thought-out, complicated, sleek-and...

Not my kind of story in general, but I think avid readers of the genre would enjoy it a lot! I was really intrigued by the writing style, even if the plot itself didn't do much for me. Leonard's limited third-person narratives work extremely well as both story-telling and character development media.

This is absolutely a high point in a career full of them. Like always, though, I find Leonard's stuff hard to review because all of his books, to one degree or another, are variations on a theme: double- and triple-crosses perpetrated by A) a shrewd woman, B) a world-weary guy (who typically has the hots for the shrewd woman), C) a couple incompetent villains, and D) assorted other Miami and/or Detroit lowlifes. And of course all of it is shot through with Leonard's unerring ear for dialogue.Rum...

Know how they say the book’s usually better than the movie? It’s cause of writers like Leonard.

Around the World of Crime and Mystery1992 - North AmericaHook - 2 stars: "Sunday morning, Ordell took Louis to watch the white-power demonstration in downtown Palm Beach." Yep, and you know this area well as you'll find Mira Lago there today. Yep, that opener is stupendous in timeliness. And the next lines, right out of today's headlines, "Young skinhead Nazis," Ordell said. "Look, even little Nazigirls marching down Worth Avenue. You believe it?" Now, those lines certainly grab your attention (...

Delightful read this one, been a nice little companion for the train. Nice and pulpy, strong and effective writing from Elmore Leonard steers this one in the right direction. He crosses the paths of many characters rather well, and the greatest aspect of Jackie Brown is just how smart it is, and how little it likes to show that off.

I picked this up the other day in a pawn shop for 1€ in English and reread it in a day. The book is brilliant with dialogue so authentic that it barely qualifies as English at times. Elmore Leonard has the ear of a great musician when it comes to writing dialogue from the street. I used to live down in this area of south Florida so I appreciate his eye for detail in his descriptions of this tacky suburban hellscape. I read this book many years ago and when I saw Quentin Tarrantino’s shitty film

Only my second Elmore Leonard read. I really enjoyed it. The whole reason I wanted to read this is because I love the film Jackie Brown. The film follows the book pretty closely. Even had a lot of the same dialogue. I like the way Elmore Leonard writes and I have yet to read anything else quite like it.

Well, for a non-native maybe not the easiest read - but with Tarantino's movie in the back of my mind this really was kind of unputdownable! I have to search for some more Elmore Leonard and hope some of his work got transalted into German....

Very entertaining and easy to read. It also gives me more of an appreciation for Quentin Tarantino as he was able to stay true to the book but still make the movie his own. Great book/movie combo!

After months of popular physics, the crime novels just don’t seem the same.

For the most part, this really isn’t my genre, which is why it took me so long to finish it. I found it boring and pretty predictable overall.

A crime novel involving gun running and smuggling in Florida.My TakeIt has parallels with Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series in its easy, laid back style while it's casually violent on the criminal side. On the cop side, they're also easy and laid back and good with laying it on thick. I would like to know who snitched about the money Jackie's bringing in. "She said, 'That man works? Has a job?''He's a bail bondsman.''I wondered,' Simone said, '"cause he don't know shit about robbing people...

Not my favorite style, lots of dialogue. A couple of the characters were interesting, and the story felt like I was reading a movie or tv show script.

In 1997, Quentin Tarantino released a crime film called ‘Jackie Brown’. I remember seeing the film and liking it very much. Recently I had the occasion to see the film again, and this time I noticed that the film was based on a novel by Elmore Leonard, one of my favorite crime writers, only he called the novel ‘Rum Punch’.So I picked up the book, and I enjoyed it very much also. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys crime fiction. The world lost a great and entertaining writer in 2013. Nobody writ...

When I went through a binge-read of Elmore Leonard novels years ago, how did I miss this one? It takes place entirely in Palm Beach County and features one of Leonard's most interesting protagonists, cool and somewhat crooked flight attendant Jackie Burke, along with veteran bail bondsman Max Cherry and arms dealer/murderer Ordell Robbie. When Tarantino turned this into a movie, he renamed Jackie Burke as Jackie Brown and cast Pam Grier, which was a smart move, as was casting Samuel L. Jackson a...

This was my first Elmore Leonard novel. WOW, do I love it! I kind of knew coming off of Justified that the stories and characters Leonard creates are just made for me. All the characters are different shades of grey - Except for Max, which is why I found his arc to be the most compelling because he is an extremely principled person constantly surrounded by people without those scruples and the whole time you're wondering why he hasn't broken yet. Max is a bail bondsman and surrounded by a lot of...

Because I quite literally swear by Jackie Brown, in the same way that the cop assassinated Biggie Smalls had a shrine to 2Pac in his garage, I should have read this 10 or 15 years ago. There is no excuse. I've been knowing how to read since like '87.The plot is essentially the same, but it differs from QT's film in a few key ways, the main thing being that this is set in Florida somewhere rather than LA. There's also a few different subplots that are only hinted at or completely left out of the

Rum Punch is well written, and you need only look at some of the dialogue to see that. Leonard’s exposition is a bit lean but he still an eye for detail. As you may expect, the dialogue feels authentic. Any unnecessary clutter is stripped away allowing us to focus on the conversations and essential action. Leonard's characterisation is sharp too. Each of the main players has their own voice, and their own distinctive way of moving. The minor characters come alive in just a few sentences. One of