Rating: 8/10
- Plot: A former Secret Service agent turned photographer meets the faded film star he adored as a boy, and is drawn into a con aimed at her.
- Clues: Few; the fun is watching crooks scheme and misread each other.
- Reveal: Clever and ironic, with a final twist on the star’s real role.
Joe LaBrava spent years in the Secret Service, protecting presidents and investigating counterfeiters. Now he takes street photographs in South Beach, Miami. He meets Jean Shaw, a former actress who starred in film noir in the 1940s, when LaBrava was a boy in love with her on screen. She is being threatened, and a redneck hustler and a Cuban refugee are planning to extort money from her.
Elmore Leonard’s great gift is dialogue. His characters speak in rhythms that feel entirely natural, and the story unfolds through their conversations. The villains, especially the vain, dangerous Richard Nobles, are both frightening and comic.
The South Beach setting is superb, with its fading hotels, retired residents and new arrivals. LaBrava’s photography gives the novel a visual sensibility.
The relationship between LaBrava and Jean Shaw plays with the conventions of noir. She is still acting, and the plot turns on the question of whether life is imitating her films.
The weakness is that the plot is less important than the characters, and some readers may find the ending too neat.
The 8 reflects one of Leonard’s best novels. It won the Edgar Award and helped establish him as a master of crime fiction.
Leave a Reply