GET SHORTY
Elmore Leonard
New York: Delacorte Press, 1990
292 pp., $ 18.95
In his latest novel, Get Shorty, Elmore Leonard turns to a location that is both new and old. Get Shorty is the first of Leonard's novels to be literally set in Hollywood. Figuratively, though, they've all been set there. From his first days as a writer, more than forty years ago, Leonard has been inspired by films and amused by their often ludicrous impact on the way we think. Get Shorty, an uneven mixture of satire and suspense, is suffused with Leonard's enjoyment of the cons, hustles, and dreams of a town where everybody is on the make.
Get Shorty has even less plot than most of Leonard's books. That doesn't mean that it and the others don't have plenty of action. They do. But his books rarely have intricate, carefully crafted plots that spur the action from beginning to end. Loose and improvisational, they follow the impulses of the characters, usually in three or four main story lines that work their way out over the course of the book, sometimes interacting, sometimes separately. Leonard's books are driven by no grand vision, but by the rhythm of their schemes and scenes, by the twists and dodges of the small-time hoods and drifters who populate his world.
Get Shorty begins in Miami, where a very minor gangster named Chili Palmer makes a pretty good living as a shylock - a loan collector for the mob. His job is to collect the vig, the weekly interest of 3 percent. At 150 percent interest a year, his clients need their loans badly; sometimes they also need extra incentives to make the payments. Chili is the master of a dead-eyed stare that lets borrowers imagine the worst while suggesting nothing directly. That's good, because Chili is actually a nice guy who rarely resorts to violence. Like Chili tells his bosses, "'How's he gonna pay you if he's in the hospital?' They don't think of that. They want a piece of the guy and their money?"
Leonard takes great pains to tell us that Chili's never been involved with drugs; that he even shows concern for the families of the mopes he collects from. All in all, he has an astonishingly well-developed moral compass for his line of work.
Chili has a falling-out with another hood named Ray Bones. Chili heads West to track down a dry cleaner with a love for the ponies who's taken off with some of the mob's money, and Ray comes after them both. That sets up the most successful of the book's story lines. It gives Leonard the chance to show once again that he is the master of underworld argot, and enables him to concoct ploys and pursuits that ring perfectly true.
Chili winds up in Los Angeles, where he falls in with Harry Zimm, and old-time producer who's made and lost fortunes in schlock movies. Harry is trying for a comeback with an idea for a big-budget film, but he needs to come up with some cash in a hurry.
This story line ushers in an assortment of actors, agents, hustlers, and deal makers big and little. It also gives Leonard the chance to harvest rich comedy from Hollywood's fields of dreams. Satirists have been working this mine for three-quarters of
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