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Summary: it's too bad a music CD isn't included
Review: with each copy of the book because the band that inspired Leonard's Odessa is a very real band from Western Massachusetts called the "Stone Coyotes" and they absolutely kick. If the Stone Coyote CD were in the book I'd give it five stars.
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Summary: Superior sequel to the classic Get Shorty
Review: In Hollywood, you are as good as your last work. Life time achievement awards are bogus presents to the masses. Former Miami loan shark Chili Palmer knows that first hand. His first Hollywood movie, Get Leo was a smash hit. The sequel, Get Lost, was lost somewhere at the bottom of the reject file. Chili seeks a new work to return him to the top. Chili selects singer Linda Moon as the subject of his next picture. To insure success, he becomes her manager. He soon begins to stage a series of events as if he was actually filming his movie. Of course, being Chili he has alienated just about everyone even as he takes the music world by storm. So if he can survive the latest group of hitmen after him, he might start actually filming his latest picture. Sequels to hit novels usually lose the gusto that made the first tale a hit. However, Elmore Leonard proves how talented an author he is by turning his sequel (to GET SHORTY) into a funnier, more coherent tale. BE COOL is Chili at his hottest as he performs as if he is a modern day Machiavelli living in Los Angeles. The entertaining story line is loaded with jocularity, wit, and fabulous dialogue. The characters are Mr. Leonard's trademark eccentric crowd. BE COOL will clearly be a best seller even if Travolta fails to star in the sequel. Harriet Klausner
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Summary: A truly enjoyable read
Review: The delivery of the story is tight and well crafted, but like a 12 year old's summer vacation, you dread the end because it comes too soon and you know you'll have to wait a year for another. In what seems to be a metaphor for Leonard's creation process we're treated to more Chili Palmer. Due to a bookstore's error in shelving the book too early, I was able to beat the rush and feel truly priviledged. The book is truly outstanding, enjoy!
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Summary: Elmore Leonard catches lightning again!
Review: Get Shorty was the first Elmore Leonard novel I had ever read. Impressed? Um... YEAH! Mr. Leonard immediately became my favorite author at that point and I began reading more of his works. 4 years later, Be Cool is here and I got a chance to read a book that featured Chili Palmer once again. A very odd beginning, the book focused on the music industry. Chili Palmer was up to his chin with crooks once again but this time he's trying to promote a young band called Odessa and write a story about a girl who worked for a dating service and was trying to get in the music business. The Russian Mafia, ex-wiseguy music execs., a giant Samoan bodyguard, psychotic rap musicians, you name it, it's in this book. Mr. Leonard has taken one of his most popular characters and taken him out of his environment and put him in the other side of Hollywood with a completely new set of characters. The plot unfolds in a "classic Dutch", multi-faceted way, putting all sort's of obstacles in Chili's way. Like always, the hip dialogue and colorful characters(probably some of the best Dutch has shown us yet)are present once again. The only real problem with this gem is that it often feels like a sequel. While the book is an excellent read, I could see it later becoming a horribly cheesey movie sequel. I highly recommend this book to all Leonard fans and fans of Get Shorty. It does not dissapoint.
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Summary: Starred review from Publishers Weekly
Review: "Nearly every sentence of this novel reads as if it's dipped in gold. This is a knockout work from a master crime writer: be cool, and relish it." --Publishers Weekly, 11/16/98
Rating:
Summary: Elmore Leonard & Chili Palmer, Right On The Money
Review: If you've seen the movie "Get Shorty" you can't help but read Leonard's latest and picture what a cool movie it's going to be some day. It's as if Leonard was thinking about John Travolta as he was writing (which isn't a bad thing). As usual the dialogue is sharp and the plot twists are satisfying. And Leonard wisely utilizes a tongue-in-cheek approach to sequels, which sets it apart from "Get Shorty". Well hopefully Travolta is game for reprising Chili Palmer and I hope they can get Barry Sonnenfeld to direct. Casting suggestion: how about Angelina Jolie as Linda Moon?
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Summary: Slick yet Not Satisfying
Review: Elmore Leonard is the master of dialogue. I'll just say that right now. "Be Cool" has outstanding dialogue--as good as Leonard has written. It is crisp and tight, and he is one of the few writers who can pull off telling a story and developing characters strictly through their speech. And yet, "Be Cool" did not satisfy like it should. I felt the story lacked simply because it was transparent and did not seem original. Chili Palmer is one one Leonard's most popular and memorable characters and as much as many of us wanted to read more about him after reading "Get Shorty," Mr. Leonard should have let us suffer. I cannot stand to give it lower than a three-star rating simply because it was still a book that I had to keep reading. The plot moves along and I had to know what would happen to his always flawed, but endearing characters. And yet, like cheap Chinese take-out, I felt my gut empty hours after consuming this serving. I recommend going back and re-reading "Get Shorty" if you really need your Chili Palmer fix--you'll be happier.
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Summary: The return of Chili Palmer...
Review: Be Cool is Elmore Leonard's sequel to Get Shorty, and is, as are all of Leonard's books, entertaining and easy to read. Chili Palmer has made one blockbuster and one bomb. He's looking for a new movie idea when a former mob friend-turned music executive gets shot as the two are eating lunch in Hollywood. The ensuing action takes Chili into the music industry and all the drama, ego, and jealousy that exists within, all in search of a new script. Palmer takes on the management of an up-and-coming singer, upsetting her former manager, who spends most of the book trying to figure out how to kill Chili. Along the way, Chili has to deal with gangsta rappers, russian mobsters, a mafia hit man, a gay samoan bodyguard, and a budding diva or two. This book was not as good as Get Shorty, but is still a lot of fun to read. Leonard sticks to his formula here, shady good guys and nasty bad guys, all of whom are odd and entertaining characters. Leonard has a gift for writing interesting people and great dialogue, and this book is full of both.
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Summary: My first Elmore Leonard
Review: Having seen most of the films based on his novels (my favorite being Out of Sight and my least favorite being a tough choice between Touch and 52 Pick-up) I was looking forward to reading this novel and getting a first hand look at his style. Elmore Leonard spins a fun and brisk yarn and his charcaters banter with the best of them. This was the perfect airport book. All style with little depth, this was an entertaining book with a lot of fun details about the LA film and music industry. But in the end it was more in the vein of fast food than a meal at one of the chic resteraunts that the characters of this book would want to be seen at.
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Summary: Be Cool -- The Leonard Tabula Rosa
Review: I have read a number of Elmore Leonard books before reading Be Cool and have hears a number of people I respected tell me how great Leonard was, but I just never got it. Sure, the characters were all cool and the plotlines exciting, but the way these people loved him there always seemed like there was something more. I couldn't find that in any of the books I'd read before this one, and so I just didn't get it. Then I come across Be Cool.
The way I see it the book is more than Hollywood insider jokes and irreverant colorful characters and zany capers. When Leonard writes about Chili Palmer he's really writing about himself. Replace Chili with Elmore and you get what he's talking about. You get the idea that Leonard is really telling you how he creates the novels he's written. He finds a bunch of cool characters, puts them in the same room and find out what happens -- just like Chili Palmer. It is so important that the characters drive the plot that it almost feels to him like they're writing the story and he's just taking notes. And he seems to find the things about the characters that make them special -- mobsters in sneakers and sweatshirts in Hollywood studios. And through all the marketing tactics and the different editors trying to change things and the money on the line, he's trying to keep his book true to itself just like the rock band, Odessa. He hopes he succeeds.
This may or may not be his best, but it's the one that taught me how Leonard worked. And I've gone on to reread some of the others I had read previously and got a little more out of it because I knew there was something more I could expect from the novelist, I just had to dig a little deeper.
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