Mr. Paradise : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: NOT PARADISE BUT GOOD ENOUGH FOR ELMORE LEONARD FANS
Review: Elmore Leonard returns to Detroit for the setting of MR PARADISE after a number of books set in Florida. I don't know about you but I like Florida for the setting of crime novels. Something about the tropical decadence of Florida: Miami, the Everglades, bikini-clad girls on white beaches, neon, plastic pink flamingos, palm trees, colorful shirts and sunglasses. But in MR PARADISE we are not back in paradise but in Michigan where an old rich geezer named Mr Padadise changes his mind about giving his house upon his death to a servant of many years. Which is a mistake because the servant gets pissed off and takes matters into his own hands. Other characters include two beautiful girls, roommates, one a call girl and the other a model, a savvy detective who finds himself involved with a female witness, two less than brilliant hit men and a corrupt lawyer. The writing is vintage Leonard who, along with hip, snappy prose, has an unerring ear for street dialogue. However, the plot and characterizations of MR PARADISE seem a little thin; I am left not caring too much about what happens to anyone in the novel. Still, the arrival of a new Elmore Leonard crime novel is usually a cause for celebration for his dedicated fans and this is no exception. Count me among his fans.

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: Can't Win 'Em All
Review: Much as I wanted to love this book,it would be a disservice to Leonard to give it more than a "3". He's great and this one isn't. Where's the twist? Where's the "omigod" everything-falls-into-place ending? And yeah, what's Kelly's real agenda?? And why is Frank so stupid over her?? And why did Montez Taylor spend ten years thinking maybe he might get some money from a guy like Paridiso?? None of it makes sense, not even "oh he thought that, so she thought that, so thats why..." Leonard sense!



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: Smart, funny , wickedly irreverent.
Review: Mr. Paradise is Anthony Paradiso Sr., a wealthy 84 year old criminal attorney. Mr. Paradise pretty much signs his own death warrant the minute he informs Montez, his man friday, that there's been a change of plan. He's decided to bequeath the house to his granddaughter and not to Montez as he had previously promised. But Chloe wasn't supposed to die too. That's Chloe Robinette, a call-girl and Paradiso's favorite playmate. She wasn't supposed to have been there when the hitmen Montez hired came a calling.
Frank Delsa of Detroit Homicide is the lead detective assigned to the case. Frank is a seasoned investigator who displays a presumably rare lapse in professionalism when he becomes involved in an affair with Kelly Bart, Chloe's lingerie model roommate and a key witness to the crime.
This book is a great example of the kind of smart, hip crime writing Elmore Leonard does better than anyone else. His famously pitch-perfect ear for dialogue has never been more acute than it is here. And the reader is introduced to an entertaining and diverse collection of really dumb criminals who keep doing inexplicably dumb things. As the narrative unfolds, Leonard adds in a number of nice touches. Like a flashback scene where Delsa and his late wife, also a cop, confront a pair of thugs in a parking lot.
If there's anything wrong with this book, I couldn't find it. It's great to see that Leonard still has the touch that has made his writing so distinctive and beloved. Mr. Paradise ranks right up there with the Dutchman's best novels. Old fans will love it. For readers new to Leonard, it's a great place to start.

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: The Master of Cool
Review: Elmore Leonard's latest, Mr. Paradise, is a fine return to crime-writing form. Like others, I was not crazy about Pagan Babies, nor did I like Cuba Libre. Pagan Babies aimed for something beyond the crime-writing genre (Rwanda), while at the same time using crime-writing as the vehicle. A strange failure. Cuba Libre had some good scenes in it, but it felt like an attempt to revisit the great Leonard Westerns from years back, while lacking those novel's hard hitting economy. But Tishomengo Blues got my attention back however. Hip, cool, utterly American in its cast of bad guys, good guys, and yes, girls. The setting (Miss.), and the event, a Civil War re-enactment, and a hero who is a professional diver. Great stuff.

Now comes Mr. Paradise. Mr. Paradise, with its Detroit setting, its cast of crazies and cops and as usual, super dialogue, is as good as, say, City Primeval. The only difference is that Leonard is now pushing 80. It's simply amazing that someone that old can have such a fine ear for the culture. Music, slang, the Street and what's happening out there. For example, in one scene, Kelly Barr meets bad guy Montez Taylor to discuss a possible deal. It unrolls like one cool clip from a film, Kelly/Leonard, zapping Taylor with extensive knowledge of current hip-hop music scene. Incredible. Try an envision an 80 year old man bopping to Iggy Pop (he's in here as well). The plot? Well, there's a lot of murders and hit men, dirty lawyers, the possibility of a big payday, a good looking woman and a lonely cop. Just take it from there. The Master.