- Paperback: 304 pages
- Publisher: PENGUIN (2005)
- Language: Unknown
- ISBN-10: 014100987X
- ISBN-13: 978-0141009872
- Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 12.8 x 2.2 cm
- Shipping Weight: 222 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (51 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,878,412 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
LATE AFTERNOON CHLOE AND KELLY WERE having cocktails at the Rattlesnake Club, the two seated on the far side of the dining room by themselves: Chloe talking, Kelly listening, Chloe trying to get Kelly to help her entertain Anthony Paradiso, an eighty-four-year-old guy who was paying her five thousand a week to be his girlfriend. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
LATE AFTERNOON CHLOE AND KELLY WERE having cocktails at the Rattlesnake Club, the two seated on the far side of the dining room by themselves: Chloe talking, Kelly listening, Chloe trying to get Kelly to help her entertain Anthony Paradiso, an eighty-four-year-old guy who was paying her five thousand a week to be his girlfriend. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars
Slow Motion Dummies Foul Their Scams while Love Blooms,
By Donald Mitchell "Jesus Loves You!" (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 112,000 Helpful Votes Globally) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER) (#1 HALL OF FAME)
This review is from: Mr. Paradise (Mass Market Paperback)
In the world of Elmore Leonard, everyone has an angle. The more corrupt the person, the dumber the angle. The role of the police is usually to simply pick up the pieces after the baddies do themselves in.The best Elmore Leonard books put you at the heart of these schemes and leave you shaking your head about how anyone could be so dumb. In Mr. Paradise, the viewpoint angle shifts slightly . . . and not for the better. The heroine of the story is lingerie model (Victoria's Secret) Kelly Barr. Kelly is as close to being an innocent as you get in Leonard's world. Kelly is drawn into the action because the woman she rooms with, Chloe, is the $5,000 a week "girl friend" for eighty-four year-old lawyer, Tony Paradiso, who likes to be called Mr. Paradise. Tony likes to have topless cheerleaders in U Michigan outfits doing dirty chants and dances while the Wolverines win on videotape. Chloe persuades Kelly to come along with the easy money, and Kelly's life will never be the same. Before the night is over there are two dead bodies and Kelly's life expectancy has never looked worse. How will she respond? This book could have been called "Seduction of the Somewhat Innocent" and that would have captured its theme better. Kelly is not only put in harm's way . . . she also has her very soul tempted. The good news for Kelly is that Detective Frank Delsa would like to take her home to meet Mama, and he helps her deal with temptation. The premise for this story would have been terrific if it had been a short story . . . or if the book had centered on one of the villains (such as attorney Avern Cohn). But as it is put together, it's a boy-meets-girl, boy-falls-for-girl story against the backdrop of criminal cretins. That wouldn't be my first choice for reading material. I plan to check out the Elmore Leonard crime plots a little more carefully in the future before I invest the time to read his latest.
2.0 out of 5 stars
Mr. Paradise is a Readers Purgatory,
By Peter F Cook (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Mr. Paradise (Hardcover)
Martin Amis has likened Elmore Leonard to Charles Dickens, but I doubt "Mr. Paradise" was the book to spawn the comparison. Leonard's writing can range from hilarious to just-plain cool, but in his latest novel he seems content to alternate between boring and forced. Leonard's prose is snappy as always, but it's like a high school kid who knows how to mix a good martini-you can't help but admire the facility, but something seems to be missing.... What's mostly missing in "Mr. Paradise" is a plot.In fact, the plot is so stripped down that I can hardly even gloss it here, for fear of spoiling it-suffice it to say there are two very desirable, shallow, and available young woman, an identity switch, a murder, and a hard-boiled, widowed, sensitive-on-the-inside-cop...wait, wait. I may have already said too much. Leonard's characterizations (which, at times in the past, have been cuttingly sharp) are deader on the page here than the book's corpus delicti (one of the aforementioned women whose identity is switched, said switching being, as a plot maneuver, incredibly facile, but as a make-the-reader-confused maneuver it works wonders-the two women are entirely indistinguishable in character and affect (actually, this stays pretty much the same even after one of them is dead). Maybe Leonard is making a trenchant critique of the interchangeability spawned by our consumer culture, but somehow I doubt it. If so, how come the reeking-of-authorial-avatar cop falls so hard for one? (No you dirty birds, not the dead one! (although, come to think of it, that would have gone a long way toward jazzing up the plot). Couple all that with the fact that Elmore Leonard, while he maybe has a handle on cop culture (though I kind of doubt it) just doesn't sound right throwing around terms like "do rag" (neither, in case you're worried I'm getting confused about authorial intent, does his main character). The following conversation, between supposedly-very-dangerous bad guy Montel and fiery-but-cool young Kelley made me cringe in the way I cringe when my parents say "cool." "We're both in style, huh?" (he) pulled the legs of his pants out to each side. "Diesel, one twenty-nine." Kelley pulled the legs of her pants to each side and said "Catherine Malandrino, six-seventy-five. But yours aren't bad." (162) Would even the most fashionable foes really compare pants-price during a high-tension face-off? Maybe not, but it sure sounds cool, doesn't it? In the end, Leonard overdoes it in the smooth department. What's all that smoothness hiding, anyway? Maybe the fact that he's used up all his effective gags, and he's flat out of inspiration.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Precision and more,
By A Customer
This review is from: Mr. Paradise (Hardcover)
With precision writing on the same level as McCrae's BARK OF THE DOGWOOD and a story equal to Leonard's TISHOMINGO BLUES, MR. PARADISE is one great read. Witty and fast-paced, this wonderful romp is set in gritty Detroit. Reminiscent of GET SHORTY (at least for this reader) but with more humor and feeling, this makes for a very enjoyable read.
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