Killshot
A
novel by Elmore Leonard
(1989,
William Morrow and Company, Inc.)
Elmore Leonard has been writing novels since the 1950s and is widely considered to be
America’s pre-eminent crime novelist. After reading only my second Leonard
novel, Killshot, it’s easy to see why
he is held in such high esteem.
In
Killshot, we meet a hired hit man nicknamed
Blackbird (aka The Bird), who is sent from Toronto to Detroit to kill an aging
mobster. After the hit, things get interesting. The Bird meets up with a
not-too-bright ex-con, Richie Nix, who is about to extort $10,000 from a Michigan
realtor. The plan quickly goes awry, and The Bird and Richie find themselves
in deadly pursuit of the man who thwarted their plans.
Leonard
is an absolute master of dialogue and fast-paced action, and in Killshot, he depicts a world that is
seedy, desperate and violent, a place where hit men and ex-cons move
comfortably from one act of violence to another. But with Leonard, acts of
violence are a means of advancing the plot and are often infused with elements
of black humour. Here is Richie holding up a convenience store:
The trick now was to
do both almost at once. Richie raised the shotgun high enough to aim it at the
girl and saw her drop the magazine as he said, ‘This’s your big day, honey.
Empty out that cash drawer for me in a paper bag and set it on the counter. And
some gum. Gimme a few packs of that bubble gum, too.’
Richie
is always chewing gum and blowing bubbles, a characteristic that adds a comic element
to his psychopathic nature. He also spends
a good deal of time jabbering away and getting under the Bird’s skin. The uneasy
relationship between these two outsiders is fraught with tension, laughter, and
suspense.
But
it’s not just the criminals and misfits that Leonard portrays so brilliantly.
The two characters drawn into this bizarre plot, Wayne and Carmen Colson, are a
middle-aged married couple on the straight and narrow, who work hard and love
each other, but who are drawn into a deadly cat and mouse game against their
will. Wayne and Carmen are forced into survival mode to elude their trackers,
and as the story unfolds, the chemistry between them is just as full of subtlety
and nuance as the chemistry between the Bird and Richie.
The
pacing of Killshot is quick and frenetic. Leonard is great at building suspense
through non-stop action and concise dialogue. For anyone who has not read Elmore Leonard, Killshot is a great
place to start. This novel demonstrates the author’s skill at developing
believable characters and throwing them into circumstances that are beyond their control, with tragic-comic results.
It’s
definitely worth a read.
