Sitting here on the beach this afternoon and evening I just finished Elmore Leonard's latest book "The Hot Kid" Its a great vacation read, that I can highly recommend.

"Set in Oklahoma of the 30's the cast of characters is huge:Bonnie and Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd, Machine Gun Kelly, John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson -- all the outlaws who captured both the headlines and the American imagination in the early 30's make brief appearances in the novel. We get glimpses of the Light Crust Doughboys, the great hillbilly swing band, for example, and hear about the wild music played by colored fellows named Count Basie and Louis Armstrong. There are scenes in tourist courts and roadhouses and in Kansas City speakeasies where the waitresses work in their underwear or in nothing at all. Where so much of Leonard's recent fiction has a sharp, almost hyperrealistic quality, ''The Hot Kid'' is noirish and even a little pulpy at times, in the fashion of 30's movies and detective magazines. "

-NYT

[ June 26, 2005, 07:59 PM: Message edited by: ITJock ]