Get Shorty (book)
From AwardAnnals
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| Author(s) | Elmore Leonard |
|---|---|
| In a novel filled with his signatures—nerve-shattering suspense, crackling dialogue, scathing wit—Elmore Leonard shows once again why he sets the standard against which all other crime novels are measured. In Get Shorty, he takes a mobster to Hollywood, where the women are gorgeous, the men are corrupt, and making it big isn’t all that different from making your bones: you gotta know who to pitch, who to hit, and how to knock ‘em dead. | |
In a novel filled with his signatures—nerve-shattering suspense, crackling dialogue, scathing wit—Elmore Leonard shows once again why he sets the standard against which all other crime novels are measured. In Get Shorty, he takes a mobster to Hollywood, where the women are gorgeous, the men are corrupt, and making it big isn’t all that different from making your bones: you gotta know who to pitch, who to hit, and how to knock ‘em dead.
Reviews
Amazon.com
Nobody writes openings like Elmore Leonard. Case in point: “When Chili first came to Miami Beach twelve years ago they were having one of their off-and-on cold winters: thirty-four degrees the day he met Tommy Carlo for lunch at Vesuvio’s on South Collins and had his leather jacket ripped off.” You need to know about this because you need to know why there’s bad blood between Chili Palmer and Ray Bones, the guy who stole his coat and is now his boss—and has ordered him to collect $4,200 from a dead guy. Except the guy didn’t die; he went to Las Vegas with $300,000. So Chili goes to Las Vegas, one thing leads to another, and pretty soon he’s in Los Angeles, hanging out with a movie producer named Harry Zimm and learning what it takes to be a player in Hollywood.
Get Shorty is classic Elmore Leonard: While other people write “crime fiction,” Leonard’s come up with a masterful social comedy that happens to be about criminals (and other fast operators). He’s a master of snappy dialogue and dizzying plot twists. The best parts of Get Shorty move along so briskly you almost forget there’s somebody with a firm control over the story. And you’ll be rooting for Chili to get the money, the girl, and the studio deal. —Ron Hogan
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Hailed by many critics as one of the best films of 1995, this finely tuned black comedy sparked a renewed interest in movies based on books by prolific crime novelist Elmore Leonard, whose trademark combination of tight plotting and sharp humor is perfectly captured here. After the success of Pulp Fiction, John Travolta continued his meteoric comeback as Chili Palmer, a Mob “mechanic” whose latest assignment takes him to Los Angeles, where his fascination with the movie business turns into a new career as a would-be movie producer. He pitches ideas with a…
