HarperCollins, May 2009
Jack Foley returns as the hero of Elmore Leonard's latest thriller Road Dogs, a full-throttle page-turner peopled with bank robbers, gangsters and con men. The author's fans will not be disappointed in Leonard's heart-pounding tale of trust and betrayal in the California sun.
The story follows Jack Foley and Cundo Rey as they are released from a Florida penitentiary, where they have been watching each other's backs for nearly three years. That's what road dogs do - they back each other up no matter what, prison-fostered partnerships that ensure, or at least increase the odds of, survival on the inside.
Jack Foley returns as the hero of Elmore Leonard's latest thriller Road Dogs, a full-throttle page-turner peopled with bank robbers, gangsters and con men. The author's fans will not be disappointed in Leonard's heart-pounding tale of trust and betrayal in the California sun.
The story follows Jack Foley and Cundo Rey as they are released from a Florida penitentiary, where they have been watching each other's backs for nearly three years. That's what road dogs do - they back each other up no matter what, prison-fostered partnerships that ensure, or at least increase the odds of, survival on the inside.
Jack is back in stir after a brief stint of freedom in Leonard's earlier novel Out of Sight, facing thirty years for bank robbery and escape until Cundo, a wealthy Cuban and returning character from another Leonard novel La Brava, sets him up with an expensive defense attorney who gets Foley's sentence reduced. As the two friends - they have grown genuinely fond of each other inside - head to Venice Beach to Cundo's home turf, Foley wonders what his buddy is going to expect from him in exchange for the thirty grand that just bought him his freedom. Jack is not particularly excited about being indebted to a convicted killer, even one that's his road dog, and is not sure that he wants to get back into robbing banks, which is what he suspects Cundo will want him to do.
Things start to heat up when Cundo's extremely attractive and literally psychic wife Dawn, his right hand man, Little Jimmy, and an FBI agent determined to bust Jack enter the picture; as the story unfolds it becomes extremely unclear who, in fact, really does have whose back, and who just wants to get their hands on Cundo's stash of cash.
Things start to heat up when Cundo's extremely attractive and literally psychic wife Dawn, his right hand man, Little Jimmy, and an FBI agent determined to bust Jack enter the picture; as the story unfolds it becomes extremely unclear who, in fact, really does have whose back, and who just wants to get their hands on Cundo's stash of cash.
Elmore Leonard delivers another knockout punch of a novel with Road Dogs, complete with all the snappy dialogue, clever plot twists and really despicable people that readers have come to expect from this extremely popular writer. Even the reprehensible characters in Leonard's books seem to know who they are and what they're about, in a way that is a refreshing escape from the grey area of relative indecision in which most of us spend the bulk of our time. Characters who can make decisions, regardless of how intelligent or ill-conceived they might be, are the hallmark of and driving force behind Elmore Leonard's fiction, and always make for an interesting story.
Leonard's precision-crafted prose creates concrete and empathetic characters upon which readers will naturally project their own emotions. The bigger-than-life heroes and villains in Road Dogs sharply focus the reader on the timeless themes of greed, loyalty, and betrayal, and although they will certainly entertain, they may just also educate.
Leonard's precision-crafted prose creates concrete and empathetic characters upon which readers will naturally project their own emotions. The bigger-than-life heroes and villains in Road Dogs sharply focus the reader on the timeless themes of greed, loyalty, and betrayal, and although they will certainly entertain, they may just also educate.
