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Freaky Deaky

Freaky Deaky

List Price: $7.50
Your Price: $6.75
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: light entertainment but nothing too special
Review: An ex-bomb squad copper, a few sticks of dynamite, a variety of seedy characters and some finely-tuned double crossing dominate this thinly plotted novel, but there really isn't anything all that explosive about this book. It's just a light, entertaining read about a few mildly dangerous, self-absorbed characters and the street-wise, mild mannered cop who's on their trail.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Leonard's Dynamite is Explosive Indeed!
Review: Another of Leonard's conglomerations of bizarre characters ~ actually, most of them you can relate to ~ with strange motivations ~ some of them make sense ~ quite a bit of coincidence, and a good dash of no common sense at all. "Common sense" in the non-criminal world; maybe what these characters do is everyday behaviour for the baddies of this life. Your average person, though, let alone the average character in a book, is not prepared to blow someone up to make under a million dollars; does not do nothing when he discovers a bomb in his boss's car; does not pick up his Glock and continue detecting, after a fashion, after being suspended from the Police Department. Good thing Leonard's characters do, though, because it makes for one heck of a good read. You cannot entirely tell all of the time exactly who the good guys are; most of the time, though, they seem to be Chris Manikowski ~ the suspended cop ~ and Greta Jones, a rape victim. The bad guys, the bombers, ex-Sixties radicals back in circulation, do not end up with what they want; generally the good guys do. But from beginning to end motivations, actions, effects, and results change frequently. Fun book, again.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Hippies turn deadly
Review: Deadly. We have this couple, Robin and Skip, two 60's radicals used to be anti-establishment, anti-the man. How things changed. Now they're ex-convicts getting ready to score a huge payback on the wealthy family that originally snitched them out. Kaboom! Deadly. In comes Chris Mankowski. The Sexy Bomb Boy. He transfers from the Bomb Squad to the Sex Crimes Division for Detroit's Finest. His very first case involving a rape leads him to a gossamers web of Austin Powder, clothes pins, lots of copper wire, a big black dude named Juicy Mouth, Busby Berkley and the Banana Dance, bushels of grass and gallons of LSD, an explosive ending, and perhaps the coolest Elmore Leonard character ever in the ex-Black Panther, Donnell Lewis. He's just wicked nasty.

Why "Freaky Deaky" hasn't been made into a movie confounds--yes, confounds--me. How can "The Big Bounce" make it to theaters before "Freaky Deaky?" Even Don Cheadle is talking about making "Tishomingo Blues." Not cool. "Freaky Deaky" is a really good story, and it's about time that a big screen version of it gets made.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: My favorite Elmore Leonard so far
Review: Ever since I read Freaky Deaky, I've been looking to Leonard for an equal or better read. After around 6 Leonard novels, I still feel like this one was Leonard at his best: fast, gutteral dialogue, a talk-driven plot, and page turning intrigue.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A wonderful page turner
Review: I read this book in one sitting as I could not tear myself away from it. Mr. Leonard is a great writer heeding tot he old E.B. White rules from Elements of Style - omit needless words. He mixes drama with probably the best dialogue writing.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Slightly Better than Usual
Review: I'd have to rate this one marginally better than most of Leonard's stuff, which is to say decent, but not outstanding. Set in Detroi, the story centers on the schemes of a pair of former student radicals from '69-70 or so who meet up again some 15-20 years later. The nastier of the two is Robin, who seems to be dying to recapture the excitement of those heady days, so she convinces former lover, and explosives whiz, Skip to help her blackmail the rich brothers who got them put in jail for three years long ago. Meanwhile, a former member of the police bomb squad is helping a woman trying to bring rape charges against one of the brothers. Mixed into it all is a former Black Panther who is now bodyguard/chauffeur/butler to one of the brothers. Lots of double and tripple-crossing ensues, and in typical Leonard fashion, the criminals are simultaneously clever in planning, and sloppy in executing their schemes. Of course no one speaks normally, as wisecracking and attitude color every line of dialogue. One downside is that there is a subplot the book leads off with that has too much of a coincidental connection with the rest of the characters, and serves to introduce the main character, Chris, is an entirely unnecessary way. Also, the offhand treatment of Gretta/Ginger's rape strikes one as rather awkward and clumsy, if not downright offensive to some. Still, it's better than most of his other books I've read, and a pretty safe bet for a few hours on the plane or beach.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Probably the best Elmore Leonard novel
Review: I've read just about all of Elmore Leonard's thrillers up to "Maximum Bob"; I've missed many of the recent ones, not for any particular reason, just haven't picked them up.

His early works -- "52 Pick-Up," "Unknown Man #89," and "City Primeval," among others -- display a very gritty, street smart view of tough guys. Starting around the time of "Get Shorty," he seemed to lose some of the grit, replacing it with sharp humor, while retaining the street smart view. It was as if he were writing with a slight tinge of Carl Hiaasen.

"Freaky Deaky" straddles those two eras. It's got the humor but also the grittiness. The plot revolves around four characters, two "good guys" and two "bad guys." (Actually, a bad guy and a bad woman.) The two good guys are police detectives formerly on the bomb squad, and the others are 60s radicals who never grew up. As in any Leonard novel, the two pairs are in a collision course toward each other, with a slam-bang climax. The dialogue crackles (Leonard has a terrific ear for dialogue), and the characters are sharply drawn.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Dash For Cash
Review: If you're planning to extort money from a multi-millionaire by threatening to blow up his house (or else) you should probably make sure of at least 2 things. First, the man you're threatening should be smart enough to understand the threat. Second, your partner, who also happens to be the explosives expert, probably shouldn't be spending most of his spare time tripping on acid. Thus Elmore Leonard sets the scene for Freaky Deaky. It's his penchant for creating characters just a quarter-turn from normal that makes his stories a delight to read.

The story opens with a lunch-time meeting between Robin Abbott and Skip Gibbs, a couple of former student radicals from the 1960s and 70s. You get the impression pretty quickly that these two people are not exactly your salt of the earth types when they fondly remember their finest moment together as the time they bombed a government building. Robin smoothly leads the conversation around to how they were both captured for their roles in the bombing, the prison sentences they served and her thoughts as to who tipped the police off as to their identities and whereabouts. She's still not happy and is after revenge in the form of a restitution payout and she needs Skip's knowledge of explosives to execute her plan.

This introduces us to Woody and Ricks, as well as Woody's chauffeur, ex-Black Panther Donnell Lewis. Now, Woody is a multi-millionaire, having inherited his parent's fortune after his mother died. She didn't like Mark all that much and he only received a small endowment, much to his eternal frustration. Although Woody has all the money, he is also an alcoholic and his brain has deteriorated to the point where he is totally reliant on Mark and Donnell.

A man with a mind like Woody's coupled with his net worth sets him up as a major target for the less scrupulous people on earth and, wouldn't you know it, Mark and Donnell just happen to be those kinds of people. Their plotting and planning from within the Ricks mansion combined with Robin and Skip's activities ensure that Woody is in for a bumpy ride. The question is, will he even notice?

But wait, I haven't even mentioned the story's protagonist. Chris Mankowski is a police detective who has just transferred from the bomb squad to the sex crimes unit. By just, I mean it's his first day, when he gets dragged into the picture when a woman walks in to report that she has been raped by Woody Ricks. The fact that a former bomb squad detective just happens to be thrust into the midst of an impending bombing may seem too coincidental to accept, but it is in keeping with Leonard's sense of irony.

Chris is by far the most complete character in the story. We learn a lot about his background, his bad luck with women, his wonderfully charming relationship with his father and his passion for his job. He is also a dangerously insightful detective who reasons problems out with startling speed, although that occasionally results in him getting himself into more trouble than he counts on. In short, he is an easy protagonist to like and I found myself quietly cheering for him.

So, from the set up, it sounds as though the story is just a simple grab for cash, doesn't it? Well, it's a grab for cash all right, but it's far from simple. You see, Robin and Skip's plan involves setting up bombs around the Ricks' mansion and then threatening to set them off unless they are paid. The problem with the plan lies in the fact that Skip is tripping on acid half the time and his attention to detail is not what it could be, with unexpected results.

Elmore Leonard sets up a hectic storyline, bordering on manic, with each attempt to carry out the extortion quickly following the last. The fact that the bad guys are a mixture of insanity and incompetence provides a strong feeling of uncertainty as to who or what is going to be blown up. There are too many humorous moments to call this a thriller, but there is also too much drug-taking and violence to describe it as a light-hearted caper. I think "black comedy" is the most fitting description for Freaky Deaky.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Well done book with contemporary tricky subject matter
Review: Since most of Elmore Leonard's characters are crooks, they should be for the most part, unlikeable. On the other hand, with the choice of someone to like being almost exclusively crooks, one has to look for someone well, as least not as bad as the other characters. In this story of former sixties bombers who plan a blackmail plot, this is hard, especially after 9/11.

Before 9/11, it would be easy to root for the blackmailers, because the people they are trying to blackmail are much worse. The marks are hard-core criminals hiding behind social prominence, and one is a rapist. So it should be easy to root for the blackmailers who were double-crossed and sent to prison.

However, after 9/11, we have to look at what they went to jail for, which is bombing. Bombing is a terrorist act, whether done by Islamic fundamentalists, or 1960's radicals looking to end the Vietnam war. In either case, it puts fear into ordinary people, and often kills innocents. So if you are rooting for these folks, keep in mind what they are.

However, there is a reason to give a high rating for the book. It is easy to say that it's just another Leonard novel. But in my eyes, he has set the standard so high, even his "ordinary" work is very good. This is an "ordinary" Leonard novel.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Second one I've read, 1st one I really liked
Review: This is the second Leonard book I've read (Get Shorty being the first) and I completed it in about a day. It was funny, poignant, dead on dialogue that runied by sense of timing when I went back to another book and the story was almost perfect. I agree with the other reviewer that the build-up was lost to a rather empty ending which kind of left everyone exactly where they'd begun. It was nice to see teh adversarial and then comraderie that emnerged between the cop, Chris and the caretaker, ex-Black Panther, wannabe criminal mastermind Donnell, that was something that rang so true I laughed as I realized how this story was like half a dozen people sitting at a round table and the focus shifting from person to person from place to place until people started changing chairs. In a way no one really shifted too far from who they had originally been---Ginger/Greta the savvy but long-term planning naive actress who may've or may have not been coerced into rape/sex with the totally mentally invalid Woody. Even she isn't quite sure what happened and what she allowed in the final analysis. I felt that it was a missed point that she didn't leap or connive her way into marrying Woody when he proposed, that would've been a kicker! Robin the vengeful Hippie is a hoot---I couldn't help but picture all of them in a movie and I think that someone like Susan Sarandon would nail RObin perfectly, a frailty, a harsh strength and cunning wrapped with a slight haze of stupidity. Donnell is of course Sam L. Jackson, Chris maybe a Bruce Willis and Ginger would've been a nice departure for Julia Roberts or perhaps a breakout role for Aisha?, Woody---Oliver Platt and Skip--I can't remember the actor's name, maybe the neighbor from Grace Under Fire? Leonard gets you into the mood of being a participant in his novels, the story twists and twists and twists until it makes absolutely insane sense and you realize that it's a lot like life. The only weak part of this was why Juicy Mouth killed Booker with Donnell (did he?)---it wa sliek this was a plot device to get Chris in but in the end it really had too much or too little to do with the central blackmail/murder/extortion story---that and the weak ending are the only reasons why this book isn't 5 stars.


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