Helpful Score: 1
While I've always enjoyed a lot of Elmore Leonard's books before and I think he's still a great writer, I found this book disappointing. Maybe I'm just getting tired of charming con men/women/scam artist stories. I guess I feel like the American people have been scammed enough by Wall Street, corporate CEOs, mortgage lenders, big banks, and Congress; having to read about another scam artist (even if he/she is charming!) is getting old.
As with most if not all Elmore Leonard stories, you can picture the characters as the story unfolds and hear the dialogue - a movie script in text format. This is fresh and inventive as compared to some of his others, but the Elmore Leonard style is still intact. Deceit follows upon deception in this story. Hardened ex-cons try their best to out-con one another and yet the cast has human characteristics as appropriate to an author aging gracefully. A good read and another superior entry for the long list of Leonard tales.
