Rum Punch: A Novel

I recall someone saying how Elmore Leonard isn't old school `cause he built the school. Very true. My favorite Elmore Leonard novels are Tishomingo Blues and Pagan Babies; Rum Punch is my very favorite, thus this review. Also, in addition to reviewing the book, let me plug the audiobook read by Joe Mantegna. The voice of Joe Mantegna is pitch-perfect, his rhythm and inflections capturing each of the characters, male and female, as well as the mood and charged atmosphere of the entire story.Perhaps readers know that Elmore Leonard listed his own `Rules of Writing'. You can easily find them with a quick Google search. Here is how Leonard follows his own rules in Rum Punch:Rule: Never open the book with the weather or a prologue.The novel's opening line: "Sunday morning, Ordell took Louis to watch the white-power demonstration in downtown Palm Beach." ----- A gripping scene right from the start; not a prologue or mention of the weather in sight.Rule: Never use a verb other than `said' or an adverb modifying `said' to carry dialogue.A snatch of dialogue from the first page: ""Young skinhead Nazis," Ordell said. "Look, even little Nazigirls marching down Worth Avenue. You believe it? Coming now you have the Klan, not too many here today. Some in green, must be the coneheads' new spring shade. Behind them it looks like some Bikers for Racism, better known as the Dixie Knights. We gonna move on ahead, fight through the crowd here," Ordell said, bringing Louis along."There's a man I want to show you. See who he reminds you of. He told me they're gonna march up South County and have their show on the steps of the fountain by city hall. You ever see so many police? Yeah, I expect you have. But not all these different uniforms at one time. They mean business too, got their helmets on, their riot ba-tons. Stay on the sidewalk or they liable to hit you over the head. They keeping the street safe for the Nazis."" ----- Right on, Elmore. No need for ornamentation here since Ordell's words speak for themselves.Rule: Avoid using exclamation points (in other words, Leonard is telling us to let the action itself communicate power and excitement).Vintage Elmore: "He saw the two bikers standing in kind of a crouch with their rifles, shoulders hunched, looking this way, nearer the house now than the gun range. He saw them out there in the open, cautious. Saw them both look toward the driveway at the same time and start to turn in that direction, raising their rifles. Louis heard the sound of automatic weapons, not as loud as he heard them in Ordell's gun movie or in any movie he had ever seen, and watched the two bikers drop where they were standing seem to collapse, fall without firing a shot, the sound of the automatic weapons continuing until finally it stopped. Pretty soon the jackboys appeared, the kids with their Chinese guns, curved banana clips, looking at the men on the ground and then toward the house."Rule: Use regional dialect and jargon sparingly.Elmore Leonard wrote to be read. When he writes dialogue, it doesn't matter if the speaker is from the inner city or the rural hinterlands, you can read it. Case in point: ""All right, go ahead," Simone said. "You find any other guns, or you find something else and you take it? The man's gonna come after you. Understand? Man that has more guns'n you ever saw in your life." ----- True to the character, in this case an older Black woman, but, again, you can read it. Every piece of dialogue in Rum Punch is equally clear.Rule: Avoid detailed descriptions of characters and don't go into great detail describing places or things.Here is how the author describes bail bondsman Max Cherry, one of the main characters, through the eyes of Ordell, another main character: "The man himself appeared neat, cleanshaved, had his blue shirt open, no tie, good size shoulders on him. That dark, tough-looking type of guy like Lewis, dark hair, only Max Cherry was losing his on top. Up in his fifties somewhere. He could be Eyetalian, except Ordell had never met a bail bondsman wasn't Jewish." ----- That's it-short, crisp, a few telling details.Rule: Cut out parts the reader tend to skip.The hardback edition of Rum Punch is 297 pages. I've read the novel three times, never skipping a page, ever. Why would I skip pages? What happens and what is said on every page drives the story.Rule (the last and most important rule): If it sounds like writing, rewrite it.Rum Punch does not sound like writing. That's a fact. A Victorian romance, it isn't. What Rum Punch sounds like - regarding dialogue - is a verbatim transcript from living, breathing people. And the world the characters inhabit is described in enough detail that we get a clear picture.If you haven't read any of Elmore Leonard's 45 published novels, Rum Punch is a great place to start.

Elmore Leonard has long been one of the blind spots of my reading life, and that's something I'm trying to work on lately. And what better way than by easing in with properties I'm already a little familiar with? Last year I checked out Raylan, which was Leonard's version of a season of Justified, and now comes Rum Punch, which was adapted by Quentin Tarantino into the masterful Jackie Brown (still one of QT's best films to date). Yes, Jackie Brown is a joy, and yes, the plot here is largely the same as in Tarantino's film. But none of that detracted from just how rich, well-written, funny, and engaging Rum Punch was as a read.The plot is both complex (in terms of all of its moving parts) and remarkably simple (in terms of how easy it is to follow, thanks to Leonard's craft). There's Ordell Robbie, a would-be crime lord and gun runner; there's his old cellmate and "friend" Louis Gara, trying to make it in the world outside of prison; there's flight stewardess Jackie Burke (white and blonde here, representing one of the biggest - and maybe best - changes Tarantino made), who's picked up by the feds running some material for Robbie; and there's Max Cherry, a bondsman who ends up entangled in all of this through a number of factors. That's enough to cause any amount of problem, and as everyone tries to work every given situation in their own best interest, bodies pile up, inevitable betrayals happen, and scams within cons within bluffs all unfold, giving you a great crime story about very petty people.So, yes, there's a great plot to Rum Punch. But you won't come away remembering the complexities, or the deaths, or the shootouts (although the shopping mall rendezvous sequences are a joy to behold). No, the pleasure in reading Leonard comes from the way his characters talk and interact, and the way their dialogue says so much about them. There's the way Robbie always wants to be the smartest guy in the room, and talks in a way that's designed to get people to let him talk more; the way that Louis's reticence hides his own anxieties (and maybe stupidity); the way that Max's conversations with his ex-wife paper over years of baggage and fighting; or the way that Jackie's dialogue so often crackles with flirtation both real and fake as she works the men around her.And if that's not enough, there's the richness of Rum Punch's unspoken theme, which finds all of the characters closing out an act in their lives and wondering if this is all that there is. It's a subtext that Tarantino brought out expertly, especially by choosing people like Pam Grier and Robert Forster for roles, but it's a treat to find out how much it's baked into Leonard's book as it stands. Whether because of lives behind bars or insecurities, divorce or federal busts, just about every character in Rum Punch is forced into a reckoning where they have to choose between the empty life they've been living or taking a chance on something more - a choice that Leonard nicely links into the middle age of almost every one of his cast of characters. All of it gives Rum Punch a richness that it barely needs, as entertaining as it is, but it's welcome nonetheless.In short, Rum Punch finds me loving Leonard as much as everyone always told me I would - savoring his flavorful dialogue, enjoying his Rube Goldberg plots, and loving every rich character he brings to the table. And hey, with plenty more books to go, that just means I have a lot of greatness ahead of me, right?

Also very funny. Leonard tells a story through great dialogue and interesting characters, weaving a gripping tale of money and violence.

Great book. The plot and a couple characters are a bit different from the movie, so even if you saw Jackie Brown, it's still got some surprises in store for you!

Came exactly as described, it's a book I love to gift and read multiple times. For anyone who doesn't know, this is the book that Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown is derived from and includes a lot more than the movie could.

Elmore Leonard is one of the authors I'm most impressed by, and this book further reinforces that point. His characters are well developed, his dialogue is snappy and memorable, and the narrative is interesting. This is the definition of a well-written page-turner. While I'm a bit partial to GET SHORTY and OUT OF SIGHT, this one ranks among his best works and is definitely worth a read.

Its Elmore Leonard and his stories always have the most creative plots you could ever imagine and outside of "Freaky Deaky" this is one of his most out there plots and that is always a source of entertainment. His crimes are always a lot better than his westerns.The only issue some people may have is with his verbiage, whis can be jarring and odd from time to time. But if you get past that it makes up for it and pays off by the originality.

I just stumbled across this book and I could not put it down. I'm not a big reader, I have tried Stephen king recently but I didn't like the writing style, although the stories are amazing. With Elmore Leonard I may have found an author that might change my views, I've already ordered get shorty.

As many reviewers have already stated, this is the novel upon which the film 'Jackie Brown' is based, and the reader can immediately see similarities to Tarantino films in the dialogue. The plot is deceptively simple, although complicated by the machinations of the characters as they try to deceive and out manoeuvre each other. Elmore Leonard sketches an amusing series of characters who spring to life off the page with vivid and incisive dialogue. The author is very effective at changing perspective and producing convincing internal voices for the assortment of characters, but the reader has to pay attention to follow the action and the dialogue. The book has a very American feel to it, which might be way Leonard hasn't received as much popularity and attention in the UK that he deserves. I am definitely tempted to reach for further thrillers by Elmore Leonard.

This is a crime thriller set in Florida. Two of the main characters are: a gangster called Ordell Robbie, whose business is illegally acquiring and shipping guns to the Bahamas; and an air hostess called Jackie Burke, who smuggles Ordell's money from the sales into America. Problems start when Ordell gets greedy and persuades Jackie to bring in larger amounts of cash than usual, which results in her being caught by the Florida state police and a federal ATF agent. They use the threat of a long jail sentence to enlist her help in trapping Ordell. The third main character is a bail bondsman called Max Cherry, who meets Jackie when Ordell asks Max to arrange for her to be bailed.The rest of the novel is about how the agents set about trapping Ordell and how Max and Jackie, who are attracted to each other, enact plans of their own. It is a clever plot with quite of lot of violence, particularly in the closing sections. At the end not everything is resolved. There remains an ambiguity about whether Max and Jackie really do have a future together, or whether they go their separate ways, with Max continuing as a bondsman.Once again, Elmore Leonard has created an exciting, fast-moving story with several sub-plots and many interesting characters, most prepared to kill without too much thought. Even the `heroes' have ambiguous ethical behaviour. There are no unbelievable coincidences and the like, just a clear story line told in a straightforward style with excellent crisp dialogue. It is a thoroughly enjoyable read.

The story of Ordell Roberts, who smuggles guns to the Bahamas and air hostess Jackie Burke, who smuggles his money back for him, is set in Florida. When Jackie gets caught with thousands of dollars in her flight bag, the state police threaten her with a long jail sentence unless she helps them entrap Ordell. Bail Bondsman Max Cherry gets involved when Ordell asks him to have Jackie bailed. Max and Jackie are attracted to one another and Elmore Leonard takes these elements and creates a fast moving and exciting plot with plenty of ingenious twists and turns and dialogue that crackles with authenticity and pace.

Loved the book and the film is great too, a slick noir classic with convincing conflicted characters and a convoluted sting. Highly recommended