Most helpful customer reviews
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
compact, intense crime drama ... and believable too, April 21 2003
'52 Pickup' is my first book by Elmore Leonard and, upon finishing it, I can say it won't be my last. Despite being written about 30 years ago the book is startlingly fresh. While I think there has been some forgotten film adaptation made of this novel I should think film producers would be smart to take a re-look at this gem.The plot? The main story is about a bunch of Detroit gangsters looking to extort money from a independent businessman. It seems they have some incrimminating photos of him caught "in the act" with his mistress. But the plan goes horribly wrong thanks to the ingenuity of our victim-turned-hero. Sounds contrived? It isn't at all. The author does a great job in creating very believable characters and capturing all the emotion and angst. Formulatic in overall concept (criminal intent foiled by the victim) but remarkably original in its execution. Bottom line: a terrific read.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Box Canyon, Mar 28 2004
This was a 5 star thriller that fell apart at the end. 52 Pickup was written in the early 70s, so you have Leonard just as things are really starting to roll for him. Great dialogue, great characters, with crime, adultery, and porn spicing the stew. It's also one of Leonard's most brutal novels. There is one murder that is just shocking, but there is also the suggestion of sodomized rape as part of a kidnapping. You really hate the bad guys in this one. The hero, Harry Mitchell, is standard flawed good guy stuff. He's doing a slow burn while dealing with his problem -- which is his own doing, a twist for Leonard fans. The ramifications of this problem, Harry's adultery, and how it touches (and ends!)so many lives is the effective subtext of the novel. The exchanges between Harry and Barbara, Mitchell's wife, are a good showcase for those that appreciate Leonard's mastery of dialogue. But what makes them a bit different than other Leonard exchanges, is that the topic is adultery, and how a married couple tries to deal with betrayal and damaged love. The downside: the ending. It's not just that it's something of a disappointing demise for the main bad guy. (You'd like to see Harry do something with drills and blowtorches.) No, the ending is just clumsy and from a writing view point, and not well executed. And, perhaps worse, just not believable. The exchange (or the obviously ironic "pickup" or payoff), is so clunky, that no bad guy, especially a Leonard bad guy, would of been fooled. But maybe that's the point, there is no neat package of an ending, since Harry's "mistake" was the first domino. He will have to live with the damage he has caused, especially to his wife and his deal lover the rest of his life.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Fun novel that falls apart at the end, Jun 10 2003
How does one go about judging a suspense novel? The easiest criteria is probably the level of difficulty you have in putting the book down because of how heavily you get hooked into the plot. By this standard, Elmore Leonard's '52 Pickup' was a great novel. I read the entire 300+ pages in two sittings, which could have easily been condensed into one had I not forced myself to put it down the first time knowing I needed something to read on a 4-hour flight the next day. Leonard writes great characters, even better dialogue, and creates a thrilling cat-and-mouse game where the hero and villains are constantly gaining and losing the upper hand against each other. Watching the hero of this novel, Harry Mitchell, struggle to balance running his successful business amidst the threat of a union slowdown, reconciling his marriage after confessing to his ill-advised affair, and dealing with three thugs who are trying to extort large sums of money from him, made for some very entertaining reading.There is another standard for judging a suspense novel that I found '52 Pickup' wasn't as successful at, which is the level of believability. The problem I had with this novel was that for the ending to work required that the respective IQ's of the three main villains had to abruptly drop about 100 points each. I just found it odd that three guys who so expertly planned their crimes in the early portion of the novel would suddenly become so gullible later in the same book. I'm not saying that Mitchell's method of dealing with his extortionists was completely unrealistic, just that I thought everything sort of fell into place too easily. In particular, I found it hard to believe that a criminal as intelligent as Alan Raimy would have been so careless in the final scene of the book. Also, while Leonard wisely made Mitchell a former war hero to make his grace under pressure a bit more realistic, I did find it to be a bit much how he seemingly never felt fear, no matter how grave his situation became.
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