Up In Honey's Room: A Novel [Hardcover]

Set in the waning days of WWII, bestseller Leonard's disappointing 40th novel finds gunslinging U.S. marshal Carl Webster, introduced in 2005's The Hot Kid, on the trail of Jurgen Schrenk and Otto Penzler, German POWs escaped from their Okmulgee, Okla., detention camp. The pair wind up in Detroit in the care of Walter Schoen, a butcher and Himmler look-alike, with whose ex-wife, wisecracking bottle-blonde Honey Deal, Carl soon finds himself smitten. While married Carl contemplates breaking his marriage vows (Honey does anything but dissuade him), Otto disappears and a dysfunctional German spy ring—led by hard-drinking Vera Mezwa and her cross-dressing manservant, Bohdan—cozies up with Jurgen. Vera and Bohdan, meanwhile, are secretly planning to disappear, but Bohdan wants to put in the ground anyone who could later give them up to the Feds. Leonard's writing—line by line—is as sharp as ever, but the plotting is uncharacteristically clunky and the pacing is stuck in low gear. Leonard has written a lot of great books, but this isn't one of them. (May)
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*Starred Review* Leonard doesn't write series novels, but every now and then, he brings back a favorite character, much to his fans ' delight. Here we're treated to the return of Carl Webster, the mythic marshal who starred in The Hot Kid (2005). It's the waning months of World War II, and Carl, no longer on the trail of Dust Bowl bank robbers, is tracking down a couple of escaped German POWs. The trail leads to Detroit, where it appears the POWs, Jurgen and Otto, are being hidden by a German-born butcher, Walter Shoen, who just happens to look exactly like Heinrich Himmler. Also involved are Walter's ex-wife, Honey Deal, who has no time for a bunch of Nazis who don't laugh at her jokes, and Vera Mezwa, a real-life German spy with a taste for the finer things, including her houseboy, the faux transvestite Bohdan. The happily married marshal hopes to use Honey as a way of getting at the Nazis through Walter, but his legendary single-mindedness takes a jolt when Honey starts to flirt. This being a Leonard novel, the dialogue flows as fast and as smooth as any words ever uttered in service of a story. It's as if the best of Mel Brooks and Quentin Tarantino were refined into something altogether finer and purer. And, in Honey Deal, Leonard has created yet another of his smart, ballsy, sexy, take-no-prisoners females. If there is a little more slapstick and a little less crime here than usual, it hardly matters. The talk's the thing. Leonard hooks you with his first quotation mark. Bill Ott
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'Leonard's inimitable stylish narrative brings this collection of bizarre characters together into an entertaining, if slighter than usual tale.' -- Susanna Yager THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'As usual, Leonard has you really caring about people who, if you met them in real life, you'd run a mile from. It's just brilliant.' -- Jake Kerridge THE DAILY TELEGRAPH 'while everything is scabrously funny and entertaining, he is still able to incorporate issues of personal morality and commitment.' -- Barry Forshaw THE DAILY EXPRESS 'Another stunning, relaxed, amusing and exhilarating book from the master of American crime writing.' -- Matthew Lewin THE GUARDIAN 'He writes with an exuberance of an author half his age.' -- Allan Laing THE HERALD 'Leonard is still in great form after more than 40 novels, and UP IN HONEY'S ROOM doesn't disappoint. His seedy wartime Detroit with its twists and double-crosses is brought to life with humour and pace in this exhilarating piece of noir fiction.' -- Chaz Folkes THE FINANCIAL TIMES 'the dialogue is as imaginative, unpredictable and witty as we have come to expect from Leonard.' -- Marcel Berlins THE TIMES 'This is a book which is both funny and gritty and of course, impeccably written.' -- George Byrne THE DUBLIN EVENING HERALD 'a razor-sharp crime novel that will not be surpassed this year.' -- Hugo Hutchison THE BIG ISSUE 'it's the cracking dialogue that leads and set the pace.' -- Allan Laing THE HERALD --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

The odd thing about Walter Schoen, German born but now running a butcher shop in Detroit, he's a dead ringer for Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS and the Gestapo. They even share the same birthday.

Honey Deal, Walter's American wife, doesn't know that Walter is a member of a spy ring that sends U.S. war production data to Germany and gives shelter to escaped German prisoners of war. But she's tired of telling him jokes he doesn't understand—it's time to get a divorce.

Along comes Carl Webster, the hot kid of the Marshals Service. He's looking for Jurgen Schrenk, a former Afrika Korps officer who escaped from a POW camp in Oklahoma. Carl's pretty sure Walter's involved with keeping Schrenk hidden, so Carl gets to know Honey, hoping she'll take him to Walter. Carl then meets Vera Mezwa, the nifty Ukrainian head of the spy ring who's better looking than Mata Hari, and her tricky lover Bohdan with the Buster Brown haircut and a sly way of killing.

Honey's a free spirit; she likes the hot kid marshal and doesn't much care that he's married. But all Carl wants is to get Jurgen Schrenk without getting shot. And then there's Otto—the Waffen-SS major who runs away with a nice Jewish girl. It's Elmore Leonard's world—gritty, funny, and full of surprises.

Elmore Leonard has written forty-five books during his highly successful writing career, and many of his novels have been made into movies. Leonard is the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from PEN USA and the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America. He lives in Bloomfield Village, Michigan.

Arliss Howard demonstrated his mastery of rural American voices in Elmore Leonard's THE HOT KID, in which he first breathed life into the character of Deputy U.S. Marshal Carl Webster. Now, in UP IN HONEY'S ROOM--a sequel of sorts--Howard expands on that performance as he voices Nazi POWs, a Ukrainian femme fatale, a cross-dressing hit man, and one of the most carnal Elmore Leonard characters, the lovely Honey Deal. Though the plot sounds like pulp fiction--a lawman tracks POWs and spy rings in 1945 Detroit--the novel is much more. It's a strange, often absurd history lesson that ultimately hinges on whether Carl will honor his marriage vows to his machine-gun-toting spouse . . . or succumb to Honey's charms. R.W.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.