Rating: 
Summary: Not bad, not bad at all
Review: No, this may not be Mr. Leonard's best effort to date, bu this book is still pretty darn good. Let's face it, something that is less than his best is still better than 99% of the other garbage that is out there to read. While I would not recommend this title to someone that wants to enjoy their first Elmore Leonard novel (Get Shorty gets that role), I would definitely recommend this to any fan of Leonard or a fan of the genre. Enjoy.
Rating: 
Summary: Forgettable Leonard
Review: Over the years I've read a few Elmore Leonard stories and I've noticed a fair bit of inconsistency in quality. This isn't a huge surprise considering the sheer number of books he's written, there are inevitably going to be some good 'uns and some bad 'uns. The good ones (such as FREAKY DEAKY and OUT OF SIGHT) have been excellent, quirky hardboiled stories that are very memorable mainly due to the off-beat characters and unexpected twists that keep you off balance. Then there are the not so good ones that are noticeable due to their instant forget-ability. MR PARADISE falls into the second category.Tony Paradiso, called Mr Paradise by his two employees, is an eighty-four year old millionaire who enjoyed watching taped Michigan University football games (their wins only) while cheerleaders performed topless next to the television. All harmless fun and he paid well. His favourite cheerleader is a high priced call girl named Chloe. She's so favoured that he has promised to look after her with a little present when he dies. One evening Paradiso requests an impromptu performance from Chloe, but he insists that he wants two cheerleaders, not just one. So Chloe talks her room-mate, a fashion model named Kelly, into joining them for the night. The timing was poor for Chloe and Kelly because it just so happens that Paradiso's right-hand man, Montez Taylor had ordered a hit on his boss for that night. Even worse luck for Chloe because she gets caught up in the hit and is taken out along with Paradiso. Montez Taylor is one of those typical Elmore Leonard characters who comes up with the most outlandish of plans and then sells it well enough to seem plausible - right up until the moment it fails dismally. You see, Chloe wasn't supposed to die. Montez was planning on sharing in her windfall after she claimed it. So a quick change of plans is required. He convinces Kelly to pretend that she's Chloe, sell it to the police and claim the "inheritance" for them. The flimsiness of his plan is not the only thing working against Montez. The other fly in his ointment comes in the form of the team performing the hit. Art and Carl are a couple of fifty year old hoods who were introduced to the hit man business by their lawyer. Their stupidity is only matched by their ruthlessness. Making no effort to hide their tracks after each job, the only mystery surrounding them is how on earth they managed to stay out of prison for so long. Frank Delsa is the detective working the case and the eventual protagonist who is faced with Montez's preposterous story. As a character, he is the most normal character in the book and acts as the straight man to the bunch of idiot criminals who are trying to out-think him. His cool, calm thinking was an excellent counterpoint to that of the bad guys. The only downside to the Delsa character is a very unlikely, very clichéd romance that Leonard involved him in. I felt it was out of place and ended up serving no real purpose. I thought he would be a stronger character if he were left on his own. It's really surprising that this book actually dragged out beyond the 300 page mark. There really isn't a lot to the story and, once the initial premise has been set up, there is only one logical conclusion and that's exactly the way it pans out. I've enjoyed Elmore Leonard's books in the past, not only for the gritty storylines that provide more than their fair share of surprises but also for the off-beat humour that manages to make the characters just skewed enough to be amusing rather than straight out scary. I found MR PARADISE lacked any of the qualities that would make it more than a moderately interesting story.
Rating:
Summary: I Hate To Say This
Review: Pound for pound, I think Elmore Leonard is one of the best writers living. He doesn't always write great books, but the reading of them is a joy. That said--this one, I am sorry to say, is a wet fuse. It simply lacks everything I read him for. But after so many good books, even he should be allowed a dud. Don't start with this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Big fun!
Review: Shady characters, brilliant dialogue, irony, masterful writing and a lively and humorous story line are what we expect from Elmore Leonard. "Mr. Paradise," a Runyonesque tale, has all this and more...it does not disappoint. Eighty-four year old retired mob lawyer Tony Paradisio's favorite pastime is watching tapes of classic Michigan football victories with an escort or two cheering topless in ways not athletically encouraging. After learning that he has been eliminated from Mr. Paradise's will, Montez (Mr. P's main man) arranges a hit that is supposed to look like a home invasion gone wrong. The perps and Montez are members of the criminal mindless. Throw in two corpses, a Victoria Secret model witness, an identity switch, assorted lowlifes, a safe deposit box full of loot, the hitmen's "agent" and Frank Delsa (a resourceful Detroit homicide detective)---and the chase is on. The bad guys feel a sense of entitlement---leading to their demise. Getting caught being the real crime. Double-crosses, scams and deceptions propel the plot. The tight prose is filled with accurate conversation in the colorful vernacular of the urban scene. "Mr. Paradise" is a stylistic, unforgettable, witty, fast-paced read. Elmore Leonard is a consistently entertaining writer---do not under rate him just because you like him.
Rating: 
Summary: Can't skim this.
Review: The author has honed his craft so that each line must be read to follow the action. Always a master of dialogue, this writing is almost abstract. A return to Detroit provides great cop stories.
Rating:
Summary: Not too bad, but not his best
Review: The story was sort of a one trick pony, the switched ID of the two girls in it. Leonard keeps it going, though, through his characters. But in this case, the characters were kinda stupid. I wanted to have more of the Lloyd in it, though, he was pretty cool. I like the stories from the Detroit homicide department, that was cool. But there were a few things I didn't really buy. First, the lawyer character hiring hit men? Why? I wasn't getting that. Also, the Victoria's Secret supermodel falling for an older homicide detective? Really. Maybe the next book he can have her fall for a computer programmer, that would be sweet! The book moves you along, but it's not his best. The whole side thing with the mexicans and the weed and all that was just confusing. I still dig Elmore Leonard, though, nobody writes like him.
Rating: 
Summary: horibble! absolutely horrible
Review: This book reads like an internet chat room. It has no narrative what so ever and characters keep falling out from nowhere. You think it might get better as you keep reading, but you just get a bigger headache. Not worth your money.
Rating:
Summary: Hilarious dialogue
Review: This is my first Leonard novel and I was blown away by the street dialogue. (The author is how old??) The characters had me laughing out loud with their straight talk, street references and general interactions. Reading about dumb criminals and sharp cops is simply alot of fun. I can't wait to try some of his more famous novels.
Rating:
Summary: Mid-life Crisis?
Review: This is my first Leonard novel and might well be my last. Mr. Paradise lacks any believable characters and, as a result, any interesting ones. The tensions and grittiness of fiction, crime or otherwise, that draw their strength from plausibility don't exist here. It's not even that the stuff that happens in the book is extremely sensational. It's not. It's just that it never rings true.
The dialogue is wrong. Ordinary people don't speak in cop shorthand. It's one thing for a cop to abbreviate their sentences at a crime scene to quickly bring another cop up to speed. It's another for every single person, from Victoria's Secret models to lawyers to gangstas/gansters, and even the same cops in their off time, to speak in this way.
I think the most embarrassing thing about this book was watching Leoanard try to be hip. I'm a Detroiter and he's throwing around a lot of local cultural references, but he sounds old and out of touch doing it. His ghetto speak is especially sad. He's also essaying through his characters, making them say stuff that is supposed to reflect on the hipness or insightfullness of the author, but which sounds neither hip, nor insightful, nor believable as dialogue. Like when one Detroit cop to another Detroit cop, giving the location of a crime scene, refers to Tiger Stadium as "That old stadium of no use to anybody anymore." People don't mention local landmarks to each other in prose form. Like I'm sure New Yorkers, if they were hailing a cab to a location near the old World Trade Center, wouldn't say "Take me to such and such street, near the location of that terrible national tragedy that changed the world forever". This is just one example, but it illustrates the kind of carelessness that this novel stinks of from cover to cover.
You can tell that the author doesn't feel confident that his characters are interesting enough in and of themselves. So he's beefed them up with superficial superlatives, characters so glamorous and vapid they seem to exist only as vehicles for later performances by movie stars. For instance one of the characters can't be merely gorgeous. She can't even be merely a model. She's a Victoria's Secret model. A cop can't be written interestingly as merely a good cop with some charm. No. He's a babe magnet who is supposed to get pity points because his wife died less than a year previous (something even Leonard has trouble taking seriously, as the dead wife exists almost as an afterthought to the character). And yet another one isn't just a call-girl, or even a high-end call girl, but a former Playboy model to boot.
Leonard seems to have dreamed up the Victoria's Secret model character, in particular, in the loose, pointless way a teenage boy would dream up his ideal fantasy girl. "She'd have to be a lingerie model...but also be, like, a rockstar...and also be a hard-ass... and...and...." The kind of character who is all things to all readers (or potential movie demographics) at the expense of composition itself. And as if these characters aren't false enough, he gets them wrong in even more fundamental ways. Have you ever heard of a Victoria's Secret model who doesn't seem to have an agent or even an attorney, but is kind of just freelancing it?? How about one who, when thrust into a crime scene and the criminal world in turn, SURPRISE, suddenly also has strong criminal instincts and is cool and calm thwarting dangerous professional killers. This is the stuff of bad comic books.
It also comes off as the kinky day dream of a dirty old man (the Victoria Secret model AND the Playboy Bunny sharing a 'hip' pad in an inner-city apartment in the author's home town, decrepit Detroit. FYI. Rich models at the very peak of success in the modeling world don't slum it in a city like Detroit.). And then we're supposed to be interested when the sexy, handsome cop widower falls for the gutsy supermodel on the spot.
So yeah. He didn't create any characters. And despite trying to be street enough to take us on a trip through the underworld of a dangerous city, he doesn't have the edge or the authority to pull it off. Throw in the fact that he didn't bother to write a plot and you've got yourself a pretty big waste of time.
Rating:
Summary: Yawn...
Review: This novel is, at best, mediocre. I kept having the feeling that Mr. Leonard was just cranking it out to satisfy a contract obligation. He spends more effort playing with verb tense than on character development. The result is a clumsy read about some basically one-dimensional people. The plot is just silly. The whole has the general characteristics of an Elmore Leonard book, but it seems a half-hearted effort. If you must read it, check the public library. Save your money.
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