The New Pantheon - Our Man in Boston

The New Pantheon • Elmore Leonard

Octogenarian writer Elmore (“Dutch”) Leonard has published more than 40 books, mostly novels, and about half of which have been made into movies—none more credibly executed then Steven Soderbergh’s iteration of Out of Sight (1998) starring George Clooney as bank robber Jack Foley and Jennifer Lopez as U.S. Marshal Karen Cisco (and a great supporting cast including Ving Rhames and Don Cheadle).

The potent combination of Leonard’s original story/novel and the Soderbergh film makes Road Dogs (William Morrow) doubly potent. In this book, Foley (whose CV boasts robbing more U.S. banks than anyone in history), Cuban exile Cundo Rey from Leonard’s LaBrava (1983), and Cundo’s common-law wife, Dawn Navarro from 1995’s Riding the Rap, are thrown together in a psychic cage match that bends all the relationships at play: Jack and Cundo, former jailbirds who had each other’s back in prison; Cundo and Dawn, whose motives for waiting for the Cuban to serve his eight-year incarceration are not, uh, pure; and Jack and Dawn, based on what can be clinically labeled a primal attraction.

Among other things, Leonard’s writing has also spawned two TV series: one based on Judge Maximum Bob Gibbs (who makes something like a cameo in this new story) and Karen Cisco, who of course casts some shadows in Foley’s ongoing life. Both shows failed, but I’d love to see a third attempt, and Leonard certainly has proven Foley to be a character with ample reserve of charisma—though it could be problematic to cast a bank robber as the “hero” on TV. —Robert Birnbaum, Jun. 5, 2009

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The New Pantheon • George Pelecanos

Photo of George Pelecanos by Robert Birnbaum

(Photo by Robert Birnbaum) One of the dependable touchstones of publishing is that every few years that rickety engine will cough out a book by maestro George Pelecanos (and a few others). Funnily enough, Pelecanos, author of 17 novels and editor of a super crime story collection (The Best American Mystery Stories 2008) is now best known for as a member of the creative team responsible for that nonpareil television epic, The Wire. His new tome The Way Home (Little, Brown) bears this tagline: “by the award-winning writer/producer of The Wire.” The sense of this escapes me, as I think readers will venture into the film terrain but viewers are less likely to pick up books.

That aside, such is the pleasure I derive from George’s storytelling skills that the arrival of his newest novel requires me to set aside whatever I am reading and/or doing in order to delve into the book—which I can report is an intriguing and vivid story of family dysfunction and rebirth sans any trace of didacticism. Teenager Chris Flynn, son of Thomas (a hard-working flooring salesman who has put himself safely into middle-class life), has a short history of antisocial behavior that culminates in his incarceration at the local juvenile detention center, Pine Ridge (which with the accidental irony of prison names has no pine trees in sight). Thomas and Chris’s mother cannot figure out how their son took this turn, and as the plot unfolds we are given some entrancing snapshots of the flashpoints and family history that can form personality. If you pick up this book, I would say there is a good chance you will work your way back through the Pelecanos bibliography. You will not regret it. —Robert Birnbaum, May. 28, 2009

» Read an excerpt from The Way Home

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About Our Man in Boston

When Robert Birnbaum was an adolescent, his mother took him to the Chicago Public Library every week, and he would leave with armloads of books. Ever since he has been an avid reader—except in the cultural sinkhole era of the ’70s (think Saturday Night Fever).

Edited by Bridget Fitzgerald

Illustration by Witold Ridel

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Saturday, November 21, 2009