For me, there's John Steinbeck, Elmore Leonard and Flannery O'Connor and then all other authors. That said, Leonard's work is championship caliber or DNP due to league substance violation. Hit or miss. His 1993 novel Pronto actually lopes along for 241 pages occupying the middle of the pack. Rather than a great novel, it's travelogue that reads more like backstory to a great novel. Then the last 24 pages happen and throw everything up for grabs.The story opens in South Miami Beach, where 66-year-old Harry Arno ("He was the same age as Paul Newman", Leonard mentions) is in a tight spot. The manager of three sports books, Harry Arno splits his earnings fifty-fifty with Jimmy Capotorto, the local boss who for the exception of cocaine, gets a piece of all ill gotten gains in Dade County. Harry Arno is responsible for covering his own operating expenses, but that doesn't matter because Harry Arno's been skimming the mob for decades.Tipped by his friend, vice cop Buck Torres, Harry learns that the Bureau has tapped his lines in an attempt to drag Jimmy Cap in front of a grand jury. The feds have figured out that Harry is skimming from his boss, and by putting that information on the street, hope Harry will run to them for protection, turning state's witness against Jimmy Cap. The Bureau has already tapped a conversation between Jimmy Cap and another party about handling Harry. The other party goes by the name Tommy Bucks.Harry said, "Well, I'm not going to worry about it. If it was ten or twelve years ago, and Jimmy told Tommy Bucks in those words, 'Handle it,' that would be a different story. I mean back when he first came over," Harry said. "Tommy's a Zip. You know what I mean? One of those guys they used to import from Sicily to handle the rough stuff. Guy could be a peasant right out of the Middle Ages, looks around and he's in Miami Beach. Can't believe it. They hand the Zip a gun and say, 'There, that guy.' And the Zip takes him out. You understand? They import the kind of guy who likes to shoot. He's got no priors here; nobody gives a shit if he gets picked up, convicted, put away. If he does, you send for another Zip."Keeping Harry in Miami is Joyce Patton, a 40-year-old catalog model and cocktail waitress he's been seeing off and on. His memory not what it used to be, Harry sometimes "reveals" to her a dark secret, the time in 1945 when he shot a U.S. Army deserter in the town of Rapallo, Italy. It's a secret Harry "reveals" to most any captive audience. The U.S. Marshals Service, anticipating that Harry needs to stay healthy long enough to testify, posts one of their men outside his apartment.Enter Raylan Givens, a man Joyce reports looks more like a farmer than a fed. Stringy, hollow cheeked, a Stetson hat tilted over his brow just right with the accent to match, Raylan has met Harry before. Six years ago, escorting the bookie to testify before a grand jury in Atlanta, Harry slipped out on Raylan in the airport. Though Harry was not a prisoner and was never served with a warrant after his escape, Raylan never forgot. Or maybe he did. Taking Harry to dinner, Raylan realizes too late that his man is taking a while in the men's room.After losing Harry in Atlanta five years ago, Raylan was reassigned to Glynco as a firearms instructor, the talent there is no doubt he possessed being the handling of guns. Raylan is estranged from his sons, Ricky, nine, and Randy, three and a half, who Raylan had wanted to name Hank and George after the greatest country singers of all time, until his wife Winona got her way and named them instead. Ex-wife, after she ran away with their real estate agent in Georgia.When he loses Harry a second time, Raylan takes it personally. He draws some vacation time and boards a flight to London, where he has a good idea where Harry went next. He recalls the bookie telling him a secret five years ago, a story about the time Harry shot a deserter in Italy, in a town called Rapallo. Using far less sophisticated means, the Zip learns where to look for Harry and returns to his home country, where a network of fellow Zips are more than happy to help him find a guy.Pronto is a novel I could take or leave through 241 of its 265 pages. I'll state why:-- I like titles that I assume mean one thing, until I get deep into the book, and learn they really mean something else.-- I don't like that for much of the novel, Raylan seems to be a poor law enforcement agent. He loses witnesses, proves inept at field work, has no professional allies and wanders into situations he doesn't know how he'll get out of. Even his ex-wife seems to have taken issue with Raylan's anger. -- I do like that Raylan is a straight shooter -- literally -- with an undefiable sense of justice. He's like the flip side of the coin of Omar Little from The Wire, a rogue beast who when you see coming, you just have to get out of its way.-- I don't like that the Leonard's facility with strong, smart women goes vastly unused in this novel. Joyce Patton is underwritten. I kept thinking of all the feisty Italian women who might have turned up in this story, but it is not to be.-- I do love Leonard's dialogue."You didn't think I was Italian?" Harry said. "Uh-unh, not even you wearing your coat like that, like Fellini. You from somewhere on the East Coast. New York?" "Miami. The Beach most of my life." "You could be Italian, yeah, but not from around here the way you're dressed. Well, you could come from Milan, I guess, close by. But to look all the way Italian, man, you got to have the suit with the pointy shoulders and the pointy shoes with the little thin soles. You staying here on your holiday?" "I've got a place," Harry said, and then came right out and told him, "a villa. I'm making up my mind if I want to live here." "Rapallo? Man, this is all there is to it. You hiding out?" "Do I look like I am?" "I've run into all kinds of people over here hiding from something--the only reason I ask. I don't care, you understand. I see a man like yourself come to a place like this? Pretty much strictly for locals? I have to wonder, that's all."-- I don't like that the novel seems like a novella that Leonard let get out of hand. There are a lot of scenes with guys talking about how they're going to wack someone, all of it courtesy one character, Jimmy Cap's bodyguard Nicky Testa, alias Joe Macho. I get what Leonard is doing with this turkey, the guy who's never killed anybody talking about how he could kill somebody, but he got on my nerves.-- I do like that Leonard took a holiday from Miami Beach and tried his hand at a different locale, relocating much of the story to Italy. Harry's bond with Rapallo is well grounded in the memories so many of our servicemen seem to return from a foreign war with. The setting pushes new air through the corridor of Leonard's patented lawn flamingo pulp fiction. The saving grace of Pronto are the last 14 pages. I had Raylan Givens pegged as both a poor excuse for a marshal, but Leonard flips all those presumptions on their head in the climax. It isn't that Raylan lacks values, it's that his values went out of fashion with the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. If Doc Holliday stepped out of a time machine into the present day, he'd behave a lot like Raylan Givens -- short on legal expertise or investigative techniques, long on marksmanship and justice.Elmore Leonard circled back to Raylan Givens with his next novel, Riding the Rap in 1995. A novella featuring the lawman, Fire in the Hole, was published in 2001. Ten years later, the last novel Leonard would publish picked up the character with Raylan. A TV series starring Timothy Olyphant as the unorthodox marshal titled Justified aired on FX from 2010-2015. The opening scene of the pilot episode drew from the climax of Pronto while the plot was adapted from Fire in the Hole.
The Review: http://thefictionalhangout.blogspot.c...Harry Arno runs a South Miami Beach gambling operation. To protect his position, he was forced to cut a deal with the local muscle, Jimmy Capotorto (Jumbo Jimmy Cap), an even fifty-fifty split. For years Harry had been padding his own stake by skimming off the top. Now a couple of local detectives - wise to sticky fingers - try to bag Jimmy by putting the squeeze on Harry. U.S. Marshalls deliver Harry to court to testify at Jimmy's trial. Even though he's a step slower than he used to be, Harry's no fool - he slips out of the country pronto. With Jimmy Cap's men following and the Feds close behind, the three sides end up in Italy, watching their own backs while keeping abreast of Harry's. But it's not until the chase leads back to Miami that the real winners and losers are revealed ...I’ve been meaning to read Elmore Leonard for a while now, ever since I heard that his short story Fire in the Hole, featuring Raylan’s character, inspired Justified, which is one of my favourite shows. However, when I picked up Pronto, I decided that I’d do my best to read all of the Raylan Givens novels in the order that they were released, and the first thing that becomes abundantly clear about Pronto is that despite being billed as the first in a Raylan Givens series, it is not a Raylan Givens novel, featuring the character only as a secondary role, instead shifting the focus onto 66 year old ex-con Harry Arno, who leads Raylan on a merry goose chase to Italy and back as the action divides itself between Miami and Europe in one of the strongest thriller novels that I’ve had the chance to read.Much like Justified, the dialogue here is excellent and the main selling point of the book. The interactions between the characters are great to see and Leonard handles them incredibly well. I didn’t mind that Raylan wasn’t the main focus of the book because Harry Arno was so fascinating, and it was almost refreshing to see a book where he wasn’t the main focus. Leonard gives the characters themselves enough depth to make them formidable, and whilst Harry Arno was never a character in Justified, and they didn’t decide to adapt Pronto, probably due to the action splitting up between Italy and America, it was fascinating to see these characters come to life as they out-do each other here. Raylan himself makes an intimidating presence as well, and it’s great to see that his character is virtually exactly the same as the show, and I couldn’t help but read his dialogue in Timothy Olyphant’s voice. As I plan on reading more of Elmore Leonard’s novels in the near future, it’ll be really interesting to see where he takes Raylan, and Harry Arno, going forward, as they’re two very interesting characters indeed.The fact that the book wasn’t set entirely in Harlan County like Justified was allows for a different change of pace and we even get to see Raylan in Italy, which is something that we never got to see on screen. It was a refreshing breather to see this though, yet even with the action not entirely taking place in the States, we still got the neo-western feel, in part due to Raylan himself being like a 19th Century lawman. The book itself managed to be incredibly quick as well, moving along at a very brisk pace once I got into it and I finished the majority in an afternoon, not being able to put it down. The best thing about thrillers is that they’ll keep you hooked and engaged right the way through even if the quality of the book isn’t actually that great (case in point, most of James Patterson’s novels that he co-writes), but the thing is here, Pronto is actually good anyway. You’ll want to read more, and Elmore Leonard really is on top form.I didn’t have any major issues with Pronto. It kept me hooked, and I really enjoyed how it played out, with the cat and mouse chase being pulled off incredibly well, and readers who haven’t necessarily seen Justified can read this one just fine and still understand what’s going on, and those who have, like me, whether you’ve seen every episode or are still catching up, can enjoy it just as much. Much like the TV series, which I encourage everybody to watch when they can, Elmore Leonard’s Pronto is awesome. I’ll be returning to read more of Harry Arno and Raylan Givens for sure.VERDICT: 8.9/10
What do You think about Pronto (2002)?
“You hear him say he’s from some county? People from the South do that. Not in Florida so much, I mean people from the south South.”“I’ve heard of Harlan County,” Joyce said. “You want to know what I think?”“Tell me.”“He’s not as dumb as you’d like to believe.”Somehow, I didn’t even remember this exchange from before. The thing about the county. Which is so true about the south South that I may have just realized now, at twenty-nine years old, despite having traveled all over the country, that it’s a southern thing.I live right on the county line, myself. The pavement ends and the sign is fifty yards from my mailbox. It means two different things, which side I say I’m from. I always say the side I’m actually on. It’s the poorer, farmer, déclassé, redneck side. The best side. Because it’s home.- - -May 2012: Hell of a badass, entertaining good time. Oh man. I know this predates Justified— is the reason for Justified— but it feels like such a great, off-book origin story, fanfic at its finest. Raylan Givens. Arno, Italy, Tommy Bucks. But, a little infamous Tommy Bucks deal aside, it’s Justified that’s “off-book,” and that’s how damn perfect the latter has the former’s voice. It takes a reminder that Elmore did it first and best.The ending back in Miami is just the greatest. Joyce, too. But the best is, always, how tickled Elmore is to spend time with his people. There’s nobody, good, bad, or asshole, who’s not worth every minute on the page. A high four stars because if I keep giving books five, you won’t trust me. I’ll read it again and make it five soon enough.
—Jamie
It's so hard to read a book about Raylan Givens without thinking of the TV show. Yes, I realize he first appeared in written form, I didn't see him there first! So, it took some shaking of the head to get rid of Timothy Oliphant and get the book's Raylan in my head. (I never could shake my head that hard. Oliphant was always there a little bit.) Anyway, Raylan in this book is a bit more of a screwup than the show's version. He also has kids. The kids I just forgive as a change in formats. The screwups? My excuse is that this is a young Raylan still finding his way around. Once the awesome Raylan from the TV show shows his face.Alright. Enough comparison. I think this book is great. Even if you have never seen the show. It's a good story with interesting characters, and twists and turns you don't see a mile away. Well worth reading. I've never found Leonard to be great for his plots (they aren't terrible, but it's not what I am reading him for.) I like him for the excellent dialog and the always interesting characters uttering the dialog. And, Pronto is no exception.
—Patrick
I wondered often before i started reading this novel if the literary Raylan Givens was a minor Leonard character and not as well done as tv version played by Timothy Olyphant in Justified. Raylan in the tv show is ice cool character wonderfully written, played so well by an actor that reminded me of Clint Eastwood and not because of the modern Cowboy thing.Raylan in this book is just as great as a character, he carried the book in the same cool,hardboiled manner and he was mildly amusing with his whole style. The novel was well done when it comes to dark humor as usual.The only reason i dont rate this book higher with more stars is that other characters was not as well written as Raylan. I have read many 4,5 stars Elmore Leonard books to compare this book with.Its funny everyone who reads Leonard know he is famously rated for writing low live characters but my two fav character of his so fars are not one of the many criminals running around in his books, its two US Marshals of his in two different series.
—Mohammed
