Rating: 
Summary: Take the Plunge
Review: This is a wild ride! Elmore Leonard introduces some of the quirkiest characters that you'll ever come across. The book would have earned a fifth star from me if he would have delved even more into the backgrounds of these crazy folks. A traveling high dive artist gets hooked up with a yankee con man in the South and lands smack dab in the middle of a Civil War reenactment that pits a northern godfather wannabe against the Dixie Mafia. The sidekick thugs on both sides of this battle will keep you shaking your head in disbelief. Nothing to be taken seriously. You'll have fun with it!---Robert John Estko, author of the suspense thriller EVIL, BE GONE.
Rating:
Summary: interesting - a different kind of thriller
Review: I have read where many people have called this a humerous book. I found very little humor in it -- not to say that is bad, though. I classify this book as a thriller, a very unusual thriller. The tension builds as we head off toward a Civil War battle re-enactment, waiting to see who will use real bullets instead of blanks in their rifles. Our hero, a daredevil diver, befriends some Detroit gangsters who are vacationing in rural Mississippi. Now why would these folks want to come to Dixie? To supplant the Dixie Mafia's drug business, of course. The book starts out a little strange, as our hero witnesses a murder. The murderer knows he's a witness, yet lets him go (why?). Several times in the book, it looks like we're heading to a deadly confrontation, but the antagonists decide to put things off and settle later at the battlefield. You won't find many virtuous characters in this dark thriller, but you will be entertained.
Rating:
Summary: He keeps cranking good ones out.
Review: What do a high-diver, drug dealers, a southern resort hotel, and a civil war re-enactment have in common? Elmore Leonard. That's as much of the plot as you need. This is Leonard in true form again, with a cast of colorful characters, GREAT dialogue, and some nasty goings-on. I listened to the audio CD of this. It was abridged but, at over six hours, I think I got the gist of it. Paul Rudd does a great job of performing it.
Rating: 
Summary: Very disappointing novel from a good writer
Review: I looked forward to this novel being familiar with the author and the fabulous review snippets on the inside on the front cover. I found the plot to be shallow and every charachter a stereotype. What does the long digression into "blues history and theory" have to do with the plot? Why do the antagonists wait for a civil war reanactment to have their battle, why not just have a shoot-out in the bar? The main character, Dennis, is strangely passive and loved by all, for no apparent reason.
Southernors are dumb, blacks are hip and mexicans street smart.
Read some of Leonard's early works not this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Incredibly bad
Review: Dennis (think Travolta in his buff days of long ago) is an incredible high-diving daredevil who trains on booze and pot, and incredibly, every incredibly-credulous bimbo in this movie treatment, er... novel, loves him. Things are going along okay with his gig at the Tishomingo Lodge & Casino in Tunica, Mississippi, until he witnesses a Dixie hillbilly mob hit. Turns out there was a second witness, Robert Taylor (think Sam Jackson in Pulp Fiction) from Detroit, who carries a gun in a briefcase and listens to Marvin Pontiac while cruising the back roads of Mississippi in his black Jaguar. Robert is incredibly cool, incredibly knowledgeable, but incredibly stupid ... he sleeps with his incredibly stupid mob boss's incredibly stupid wife, Anna Banana. Robert wants to take on the Cornbread Cosa Nostra and wants Dennis in on it. To complicate matters there is the incredible sex with the incredible women. Vernice, a waitress using speed to lose an unwanted 40 pounds,lures Dennis with the whitest thighs he's ever seen. She's hot. And Diane, a talking head, comes to do a story on him and immediately wants to take him to Memphis for nookie. So you know she's hot. And then there's the hot, hot Loretta, the easily-bedded farm girl wife of the stupid, abusive villain. But hey, it's the incredibly clever scams the incredibly learned Robert Taylor plays on this incredibly stupid cast of characters, if not this incredibly stupid region of the country, that moves the action through all kinds of incredibly unexpected twists and turns. Incredibly, before he knows it, Dennis has agreed to join Robert in incredible civil war battle reenactment, which leads to a showdown between the incredible bad guys and the incredible really bad guys. Incredibly, the incredible Elmore Leonard wrote this, but didn't finish it, and incredibly some readers like it. Incredible.
Rating: 
Summary: Great dialog, Annoying reader, Poorly edited tape
Review: I'm new to Elmore Leonard, and listened to the unabridged cassette while commuting an hour each way to work. I really enjoyed Leonard's dialog - it sounded very real and gave you an innate understanding of the characters all by itself. The plot was fun, in the manner of Leonard movies I've seen like Get Shorty or the fabulous Jackie Brown. My problems with this product were more related to the poor quality of the tape editing and the reader. The reader has annoying habit of dropping the tone of his voice and lengthening the last word at the end of just about every sentence. I found it to be really distracting, almost as when someone ends every sentence with a verbal question mark. He seems to have good range of expression for the characters, but this quirk was *really* annoying. The tape editing was very poor - about the worst edited book on tape that I've listened to. It seems like it was slapped together quickly to coincide with the release of the book. One side of the tape would abruptly end several minutes before the end of the tape. I don't recall whether this recording supported auto-reverse at the end of side one, but there was definitely no indication that the side of the tape was complete - just dead air. In this case, I recommend that you spend your money on the printed version and let this half-baked tape sit in the sun.
Rating: 
Summary: High Divers and Civil War Re-Enactors -- Typical E. Leonard
Review: Once again, Elmore Leonard has managed to put together a wonderfully delightful book featuring the antics of bumbling criminals and flawed heroes all in a strange backdrop of unique characters. This time the setting is a casino in Mississippi and our hero is a high diver who is hired by the Casino as a sideshow to attract gamblers. Along, the way, our hero will encounter alluring women, murderers, conmen, tough drug dealers, the FBI and crooked businessmen. Like almost every Elmore Leonard book, the story is almost impossible to describe because it takes a number of strange turns that are impossible to predict. You aren't always sure who are the good guys or the bad guys and sometimes the status of a hero or bad guy changes rather quickly. Of course this all happens thanks to great dialogue and a snappy writing style that makes it hard to put the book down. The strangest part of this book regards the "hobby" of Civil War Re-Enacting which becomes a critical part of the plot. If you aren't familiar with this endeavor, I suggest you read Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz. In any case, pick up this book and enjoy it. As usual for Leonard, this book won't win any awards for being serious literature but it is fun to read and I hope that it is treated well by Hollywood when they option the book.
Rating:
Summary: I think I'd say something like . . .
Review: Somewhere in the United States there are schools that teach "Leonard Dialogue" in their writing courses, don't you think? Because clearly nobody writes dialogue like Elmore Leonard. He doesn't really require much of a plot and frequently doesn't bother giving us one. He can be in Cuba at the time of the Maine or Rawanda 10 years after the genocide. It doesn't really matter. Leonard writes about people, not necessarily good people, and what they say to eachother. And the thing is, as we traverse life's highways, even if we've been lucky to avoid hit men and racist scoundrels and drug traffickers, scammers, con men and con women, we end up believing that if we had known such people, this is what they would say to eachother. Here we have another collection of oddballs bent on an entire panoply of various goals. Dennis wants to keep diving the 80 foot board and fall in love, probably not in that order, and Robert wants to love the wife of his boss and make a lot of money, probably not in that order. And involved with them is a cast of the usual suspects, villains, idiots, lost souls, alcoholhics, exiled lovers, misplaced wives and bad guys. And girls. With Tishomingo, we get a course in Delta Blues Music, con games, and falling in love. A little violence, a little sex, and the best dialogue being written today. The heroes aren't that heroic and the choices are vague and ambiguous. And the stories that are told and the promises made are usually lies. But it's enjoyable and a must read if your a Leonard fan. And I will read him again. And probably again, in that order.
Rating:
Summary: Very satisfying
Review: Listening to Frank Mueller do Elmore Leonard's character's molded with a "where-is-this-going-but-I-must-keep-going" plot reveals an audiobook work of the first order. This one is a keep driving around the block, sit longer in the garage, hope there's a traffic jam kind of listen. Ahhhhhhh.
Rating:
Summary: Leonard takes us to new worlds
Review: OK, the novel is short, and ok, it's about one group of lowlifes trying to outdo another group of lowlifes. Both of these situations are common to an Elmore Leonard novel, so to make it fresh, he has to at least take us to a different situation. He does is well here. First, we get a taste of the carnival circuit, as our hero (Dennis) is a performer who high dives into a small tank of water. We get to see the world of the fast buck artist a bit, as Dennis has to negotiate with these folks to book his gigs. Next, we get a look at the so-called "Dixie Mafia". It was just in the newspapers about how gambling in Mississippi is becoming big time. The wonderful folks in the D.M. make their living with "side attractions" to the customers of these places, which include drugs and prostitution. They are no less vicious then their neighbors up north. Finally, we get to see the world of Civil War re-eanactment. Apparantly, many people take this very seriously. And even those who use it as an excuse to get "likkered" up and blow off some steam take us into a world I was not familiar with, and found very interesting. With all this wrapped around the story of Dennis seeing something he wasn't supposed to, and how even the "legitimate" lawmen have their own way of handling the situation make this another winner from the author. Just wish the stories were a little longer.
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