When a wannabe tough guy tries to muscle in on Vincent Majestyk's melon farm, Majestyk lets him know in no uncertain terms that he's not welcome. Majestyk, a US Army war veteran, now has only one goal in mind: get his crop in and save his farm. He's not about to let some two-bit hustler dictate terms. This lands Majestyk in jail, though, where he faces assault charges and gets caught up in an escape attempt by a fellow jailbird, the notorious hit man Frank Renda. Offered a chance to run off with Renda, Majestyk just wants to get clear of the whole mess and return to his melon farm. However, Majestyk finds this isn't so easy after you've double-crossed a professional killer and now he's got more than the melons on his farm to worry about. But teamed up with Nancy Chavez, a tough and sassy lady hired on as a picker, Majestyk is about to teach Renda that this is one melon farmer you don't mess with.Like many others, I was saddened by the recent passing of Elmore Leonard and initially felt the urge to read a bunch of his stuff that I haven't read yet (and there are a bunch), but I guess there is plenty of time for that. Since there won't be any more from EL I'm going to take my time to savor them.So instead I decided to revisit a personal favorite, Mr. Majestyk. Even though it's sort of a minor EL title, this little novel packs a lot of punch in a small package. Part crime novel and part modern western, Mr. Majestyk doesn't have a lot of the snappy dialogue that EL is famous for, but the dialogue as well as the prose are distinctly Elmore Leonard and carry that same tough, casual feel. There is a lot of action in Mr. Majestyk. I read somewhere that EL wrote this as an original screenplay and wrote the novelization later. That may be because Mr. Majestyk certainly has a cinematic feel to it (strangely enough I don't believe I have ever, at the time of this review, seen the film starring Charles Bronson. I'm going to have to correct that deficiency posthaste). Despite this fact, Majestyk, while seemingly a pretty archetypal hero character, actually has a lot of depth and this is stuff you sort of have to put together yourself since neither EL nor Majestyk seem to have a lot of patience for navel-gazing. Majestyk really is a great character. He's a working-class bad ass without even trying or realizing it. The other characters are drawn perfectly as well and I am always left in some amazement that EL can make characters come alive without letting a lot of pesky words get in the way.I love Mr. Majestyk and I thank Elmore Leonard for writing it. Again, I'm sad about his passing, but I have a lot yet to read of his stuff. As long as there are Elmore Leonard stories to read and re-read, heck, that's about the best kind of immortality to have, if you ask me.R.I.P., Elmore Leonard, 1925-2013
I didn’t know much about Elmore Leonard going into this book aside from a general image and the specifics that were brought up in his obituaries. Those specifics were enough to pique my interest, so I thought I’d give him a try. I went to my favorite library and browsed through the books on CD, choosing Mr. Majestyk over some of the others because it was narrated by Frank Muller, who completely enthralled me with Moby Dick (not that I’m trying to compare those books). This one, however, fell flat for me. I never really cared about the characters because I never really got to know them. Through the majority of the book, I felt like I was still waiting for the opening credits to roll. I suppose Majestyk was supposed to be “the little guy,” the guy who just wants to put in a hard day’s work and earn his own living. That’s certainly how the other “bully” characters treat him. But as a reader, we’re never fooled. We see it from the beginning scene when he quietly stands up to the store clerk who won’t unlock the bathroom for the migrants—someone who handles that situation like Majestyk did probably has the ability and confidence to defend himself, if it comes to that. Nancy sees it right away, but we don’t get a good sense of why she can see this in Majestyk when no one else can, including her friends who also witness this scene (and who are never given names). Everyone else plays pretty well exactly the role you’d expect. The small-time thug tries to impress the big-time thug, but messes it up. The big-time thug, who’s just past his prime thug days, gets overzealous and messes up too. His thrill-seeking but constantly bored girlfriend gets scared. And the little guy who everyone underestimates? Well, I don’t want to give it away…I believe that a novel should be able to stand on its own, regardless of its historical/social context or how it came into being or the author’s biography or whatever. That said, I wonder how my reading of Mr. Majestyk would have been affected if I had known that Elmore Leonard wrote it as a screenplay first and then novelized it later. The characters and plot are just as completely unsurprising as the plot and characters in a 1970s action movie, if I can generalize a bit. But 103 minutes of ‘splodey fun (there are explosions on the movie cover, though I don’t recall any in the book… maybe during the bus escape?) can’t really be translated directly into a novel, even one on CD.
What do You think about Mr Majestyk (2007)?
Slick, understated and brooding with menace, this early Leonard book displays all the characteristics that would go on to be his trademark: simple, minimalist sentences that give the reader room to breathe; characters who aren't ever quite as cool, or clever, or composed as they think they are; and a rapid escalation from calm to violence by way of events that leave an ordinary man taking extraordinary actions simply to keep his head above water. It's a short, blunt and uncompromising book, but Leonard's unmistakable talent for creating character and cast-iron verisimilitude lift it out of the ordinary. Excellent stuff.
—Lee Battersby
I picked this one up because it appeared on James Lee Burke's pleasantly idiosyncratic list of the all-time best mysteries, which was published recently in Parade magazine. Says Burke: "It’s one of the best portrayals of professional criminals I have ever read and a beautiful accomplishment in terms of dialogue and style." Mr. Majestyk is a noirish novel of the Average Guy school: melon farmer Vincent Majestyk cares about nothing other than saving his crop, but then he runs afoul of a local mobster and discovers that harvest time becomes more complicated when somebody wants to kill you. Tight, fast-paced, recommended.
—David
I can see why James Lee Burke - a writer whom I very much enjoy reading - rated this book so highly (apparently he listed it as one of the 10 best all-time mysteries). Elmore Leonard's descriptions of sad cafes, lonely gas stations and empty, dry, dusty landscapes is echoed in Burke's recent masterpiece,"Rain Gods". However, "Mr Majestyk" is not typical of Leonard's best writing; it feels very much like a story developed for the screen, without the depth of character, sharp dialogue, and fractured narrative structures of his finest novels. This is not coincidental. "Mr Majestyk" is in fact a 1974 novelisation from Leonard's original screenplay for the film of the same name directed by Richard Fleischer and starring Charles Bronson as the eponymous hero. The writing focusses on the violent action and straightforward unfolding of the story. You can envisage it playing out on the big screen, but the relationship between melon-grower Majestyk and melon-picker Nancy Chavez is under-developed and consequently unconvincing, and the dramatic ending is pure Hollywood. Leonard's villains are generally the most interesting characters in his books. Here the hitman Frank Renda is ruthless but inept, and the character lacks the complexity and depravity of Leonard's best villains. Nevertheless, it is an enjoyable, easy read and the story moves along quickly, always holding my interest. It certainly made me want to see the original film.
—Michael Nutt
