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America's wannabe most famous US Marshal vs. America's wannabe most famous bank robber.
William Morrow & Company, 2005, 320 pages
( Gangsters, gun molls, gunfights and Prohibition, yeeha! )
Verdict: This is not high art, but it's a page turner. The Hot Kid is a book-length duel between a US Marshal and a bank robber, both of them interesting if not terribly complex men, set in a 1930s that is convincingly described if a little too seedy/glamorous to be real. Famous historical figures interact with fictional ones, the sex and violence quota is amply maintained, and for all that it's nothing more than a piece of popular genre fiction, it's well-written.
My complete list of book reviews.
William Morrow & Company, 2005, 320 pages
Carl Webster, the hot kid of the marshals service, is polite, respects his elders, and can shoot a man driving away in an Essex at four hundred yards. Carl works out of the Tulsa, Oklahoma, federal courthouse during the 1930s, the period of America's most notorious bank robbers: Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson -- those guys. Carl wants to be America's most famous lawman. He shot his first felon when he was fifteen years old. With a Winchester.
Louly Brown loves Carl but wants the world to think she is Pretty Boy Floyd's girlfriend.
Tony Antonelli of True Detective magazine wants to write like Richard Harding Davis and wishes cute little Elodie wasn't a whore. She and Heidi and the girls work at Teddy's in Kansas City, where anything goes and the girls wear -- what else -- teddies.
Jack Belmont wants to rob banks, become public enemy number one, and show his dad, an oil millionaire, he can make it on his own.
With tommy guns, hot cars, speakeasies, cops and robbers, and a former lawman who believes in vigilante justice, all played out against the flapper period of gun molls and Prohibition, "The Hot Kid" is Elmore Leonard -- a true master -- at his best.
( Gangsters, gun molls, gunfights and Prohibition, yeeha! )
Verdict: This is not high art, but it's a page turner. The Hot Kid is a book-length duel between a US Marshal and a bank robber, both of them interesting if not terribly complex men, set in a 1930s that is convincingly described if a little too seedy/glamorous to be real. Famous historical figures interact with fictional ones, the sex and violence quota is amply maintained, and for all that it's nothing more than a piece of popular genre fiction, it's well-written.
My complete list of book reviews.
