Killshot

I have tried Elmore Leonard books in the past and stalled. Not with this book, in which Leonard made a very bright mark for his reputation as a master crime novelist. This is Leonard at his best.

A tough-minded married couple witnesses a crime near the start of this tale and spends the rest of the pages avoiding a professional hitman and his bumbling associate from taking them out.

Someone once said, “Elmore Leonard writes dialogue like he invented it.” It’s absolutely true of this book. I highly recommend it.

I love complicated, conflicted villains, so this early masterpiece by Elmore Lenard grabbed me on page one.

The Blackbird, an Ojibwa Indian living in Toronto, is a paid assassin. He's very good at it, but now he's fifty, and he's tired of taking orders, living alone, and drinking too much. The phone rings, and a mobster hires him to kill a man in Detroit. The Blackbird believes this is a sign. In Detroit, he bumps off the target and drives to the nearest bar to celebrate his retirement. No more killing for him. But a fast-talking hustler in the bar… show more.

Just about any of Leonard’s several dozen suspense novels could have a top spot in this reckoning, including the better known Get Shorty, Freaky Deaky, and Glitz. My vote for the best goes, however, to Killshot, his dark, deftly plotted, highly comedic 1989 thriller about two bumbling killers and a ballsy middle-aged married couple the killers mistake for easy marks. Armand Degas, a soulful Ojibway known as the Blackbird, has grown tired of being a hit man for the Detroit mob. He’s befriended by a moronic thug named Richie Nix, whose bucket list includes robbing a… show more.