Reading Rainbow: Riding the Rap by Elmore Leonard

With Justified having returned this past Tuesday, now is probably as good a time as any to get this one up. I actually read Riding the Rap when I went to Europe back in August. It was coincidental, but I started reading it about a day before Elmore Leonard died. I followed it up promptly with When the Women Come Out to Dance, the book that contained "Fire in the Hole," but I'll talk more about that in a separate entry.

Picking up after Raylan shoots Tommy Bucks dead--which is where Pronto left off and is the scene that kicks off the aforementioned series, Justified--Raylan is with Harry Arno's ex-girlfriend, Joyce. Harry Arno, at least arguably the co-lead of these first two books, is at the end of his rope when he ends up getting held hostage by three fellow lowlifes who set off to try to work Harry over to get the money he's stashed away in a Swiss bank account.

The cast of characters is every bit as colorful as anyone with Leonard's work has come to expect. The natural evolution and escalation of violence as the crime spins out of the captors' control has that wicked Leonardian logic to it that makes you smile in horror. Raylan's wise-cracking never stops being hilarious, and with Timothy Olyphant having immortalized him on television, the reader gets the added bonus of imagining him quite vividly acting out every look of irritation and anger, adding an originally unimagined layer to the reading experience.

Just as you would expect, Riding the Rap is a fuckload of fun and drops you right off at the front steps for where "Fire in the Hole" and the Justified series picks up.

Reading Rainbow: Pronto by Elmore Leonard

With Pronto being the book in which Raylan Givens was first introduced, it made as much sense as any other book when choosing a re-entry point for Elmore Leonard, who I had not read since the late 1990s.

While readers flocking to the book in search for more Raylan than their weekly fix of Justified can give them may wade through the first 33 pages wondering where the hell he is, it isn't too long before he saunters in wearing his Stetson hat. Given the fact that Leonard can spin a yarn as easily as he might pour a drink, it's hardly even noticeable that Raylan hasn't made an appearance until he does--with an air of mystery about him.

What might be most odd about the whole book (in retrospect and given that Raylan Givens has become a rather iconic figure much after the fact) is that its events largely take place as a result of Harry Arno--a 66-year-old bookie from Miami--giving Raylan the slip for the second time in their dealings with one another. Knowing Raylan as we have all come to know him, this makes for an odd and almost incongruous introduction.

Regardless of the fact that one has to reconcile Raylan's error with the character on Justified, Leonard's penchant for taut, funny, unpredictable storytelling is on full display in Pronto, and there is the added bonus of getting to read the Tommy Bucks scene from the open of the pilot as it was originally written, complete with the full back story.

If you watch Justified--and if you don't, what the hell are you doing wrong with your life?--there is plenty to love here, even if there are slight changes from the source material that Graham Yost & Co. made with regards to Raylan's back story.