Ex-advertising man, son of Elmore and very much in the same mould...
Read:
Quiver, which has Kate McCall's husband killed by her teenage son in a bow-hunting accident, before ex-boyfriend and ex-convict Jack turns up on the doorstep. Son Luke takes off for their hunting cabin, followed by Kate and Jack along with Jack’s ex-crime colleague Teddy and girlfriend Celeste, along with hitman DeJuan, who are after their share from an earlier robbery (or something in lieu thereof). A rattling good read.
Trust Me, which rattled along quite merrily as various agencies double crossed and chased each other in an attempt to settle old financial scores. The author’s Elmore’s son, and there’s definitely something in the DNA.
All He Saw Was The Girl, another lively little read set in Detroit and the environs of Rome. Secret Service agent Ray Vanelli's wife is having an affair with Mafia hard man Joey Palermo in Detroit and when
Palermo learns she's married and establishes her husband's occupation decamps to his uncle's villa outside Rome, followed by a husband who wants his missus back.
Meanwhile two American exchange students hijack a taxi in Rome at the end of a drinking binge. and while they're being held in jail they cross paths with a couple of dudes from 'Ndrangheta, the Calabrian mafia. Chip Tallenger is the son of a rich US Senator, and Dad's able to extract them from this particular predicament but the story attracts the attention of the Italian press and a captioning error on the attached photo has the 'Ndrangheta dudes plotting a kidnapping but snatching the wrong student.
Working class ex-ice hockey player McCabe is, however, able to escape and sets about turning the tables to get the ransom money back by kidnapping the girl who lured him into the honey trap, who happens to be the head kidnapper's girlfriend and Joey Palermo's cousin. That's all you need in the way of a plot outline, and the to-ing and fro-ing has things rattling along very nicely all the way to the end where, predictably, McCabe gets the girl.
Overall another fine effort by Leonard who's clearly a chip off his Dad’s authorial block and the sort of thing you'll race through to see how things sort themselves out. An easy and highly entertaining read, but a read oncer to borrow from the library rather than buy and place on the shelves…
Other titles:
Voices of the Dead