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Read Unknown Man #89 (2002)

Unknown Man #89 (2002)

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Series
Rating
3.78 of 5 Votes: 2
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ISBN
0060082216 (ISBN13: 9780060082215)
Language
English
Publisher
harpertorch

Unknown Man #89 (2002) - Plot & Excerpts

#11 or 12 from leonard for me...kindle...this one dedicated "for peter"there's a quote early on:a prompt man is a lonely man. ---andrew donahuemaybe he's related to phil, i dunno.story begins:a friend of ryan's said to him one time, "yeah, but at least you don't take any shit from anybody."ryan said to his friend, "i don't know, the way things've been going, maybe it's about time i started taking some."this had been a few years ago. ryan remembered it as finally waking up, deciding to get off his ass and make some kind of run.onward & upwardtime: the modern eraplace(s): michigan...[the lower peninsula]...detroit, troy, that area, wayne, oakland, and macomb counties...greater detroit and pontiac area...as far east as grosse pointe and mount clemens on lake saint clair...athens bar (jack meets dick)...wayne county clerk's office...bus station...pontchartrain hotel...sportree's lounge on west eight mile...the hairhouse in pontiac...wayne county morgue (unknown man #89)...eldorado motel on woodward...uncle ben's pancake house...saint joseph mercey hospital, pontiac...rochester...abercrombie and fitch in the somerset mall...the a&p...florida...vista del mar (florida)the list above is not 100% complete...close maybe...90%?charactersjack c. ryan...that's how it is on his business cards--all lower case--and he is in private practice, search & serve associates, 36 years old...lives alone in royal oak...was married oncedick speed...friend of jack...a police officer w/long hair and jeans, works out of the criminal investigation division at 1300 beaubien...jack & dick went to school...catholic central...is w/squad six, handles drug-related homicidesjay walt...a processto...sort of fat jewish guy who wore leisure suits...runs a collection agency, allied credit servicejack's sister, marion, and brother-in-law, earlrita...legal secretary...blonde hair...jack is seeing hertwo outside men who jay walt took along w/ryan on a repossessiona couple of black girls with coats on...visitors...coffee chop, 9th floor...frank murphy hall of justicethe waitress in the coffee shop..."she'd made up her mind, nothing was going to make her look."client of jay walt's, wants to find robert leary, jr....also known as bobby lear...raised in foster homes...cass technical high school...drafted sent to vietnam...chu lai...psychiatrik-ally disabled...discharged...returns to detroit and begins killing people.allen anderson...a name...arden park, where robert once livedrobert j. & clara anne, parents of robert, jr.denise leann watson...28 years old...& robert, issued a marriage licensea detroit edison crew, tearing up the street w/jackhammersthelma simpson...bobby lear's girlfriend...he beat her to death w/his fistseugene bailey...shot and killed by bobby, eugene, a known dope dealerronnie j hughes...bobby attempts to murderteddy "too much" smith...shot & killed by leary...with smith's 3-yr-old son sitting in the front setraymond gidre...associate of mr. perezfrancis x. perez...man who wants to find/locate learytunafish...virgil royal's brother-in-lawvirgil royal...leary's partner-in-crime...did time...leary did not, etcwendell haines, deceased...one of three...in w/virgil/leary(various bartenders, art, waitresses...uniformed police...medical examiner/assistant...hotel night clerks...drunk old men...bums...apartment manager...answering service girl...a.a. meeting table leader...other a.a. members...like ed...an anonymous guy...a woman about forty-five...a man named paul...irene)lavera...tunafish's wifemarcella lindsey...lonnie's girl/wifelonnie...a guy virgil whacks for 1500mr sal...owner/proprietor of the hairhouseold jim...gidre tells ryan about him...some old buck he'd go cabbin withbonzie...a friend of tunafish'sdon, denise's brotehr in dayton...joanne, his wife...scott, skip, and june bug...their boysthe character list is not complete...almost...some of the people jack c ryan serveda doctor who fled the room where jack, "the concerned hubby", and rita met hima rock groupw/jay walt: a woman in hair curlers...a little kid, stevie, eating spaghetti-os, husbandrobert leary, jr....age thirty-five...actually, jay walt asks jack to find hiim...60...55-65...no credit recordmr. perez...possibly the client of jay walt...the one who wants to find robert leary, jr....from baton rouge...also has a home at pass christian, on the gulf...an investment consultant mr & mrs joseph l watson, parents of denisecars jack c ryan drivesa cougar w/four bullet holes in the doortrades up to a pontiac catalina, 2-door, light-blue, air and heavy shocks...4658 deliveredyeah okay, so by chapter two, jack is looking for robert leary, jr...at the request of his friend, jay walt...looks in public records...asks his friend, dick speed to look...places an ad in the paper...call...a voice does call, 'what do you want?'...meet at the bus station...gets another call...'what do you want?'later, dick speed calls...'the guy's a fucking beauty.'jack tells jay walt $20 an hour is not enough...he could get killed.mr. perez locates lost stockholders for companies...for a fee...and then he gets a fee of the value of the certain property he has located for the lost stockholder...some do as asked...some look on their own, etckujira japanese word for whale...sumi a technique...yeah, okay...there's a rather protracted alcoholics anonymous scene w/ryan and denise and others...not like, say in infinite jest where the boys in the room are trying to get in touch with their inner infant...but a kind of boney-fide a.a. meeting, the whole schlemiel...update, finished, friday evening..10:33 p.m. e.s.tokay, so yeah, i'm finished...and writing like j.r....investing...heh! that thing at the beginning, a prompt man is a lonely man seems to tie into the storyline...should, shouldn't it...leonard used it, after all......but...yeah okay so i like the way he used it, the way that does tie in. to several of the characters...or i am confused...let's see if i can find the passages that i highlighted...hold on.okay...so there's this...i'll make a list and take a look afterward...see if i can make sense of it for me:he had been convicted and served time once, because he had been impatient and not properly prepared. ...this, in relation to mr. perez i think it was...though it could have been virgil royals...perez, pretty sure...that's an academic term meaning one is winging it for the students in the aisle seats.there's another...here it is: fucked up this one time, being a little late, a little too patient--the man was almost out. virgil concentrated and began squeezing the trigger of the nickel-plate, okay so that one is definitely related to virgil, nessay pas? *** could be another...give me a sec...well...i'm not going to get into it hot and heavy...just some things to consider...me...next go round...next leonard story...hmmmm...a prompt man is a lonely man...maybe it would help if i knew andrew? i think phil ruined a lot of the country, that's the thing...and even now...some jazzy belle from some greek island is drawing a bead on me...so much gets lost in the translation. patience...impatience...yeah, this story is about that...the one, virgil, being very patient...all that time in the hooey, solitaire even...biding his time...patient...whereas perez...well...he is patient, too...but he still wants what he wants...i liked this story...4-stars...i liked the previous leonard story more...good read.onward and upward*** (french, meaning isn't it so?)

(This is a blog post I did that covers the two Leonard books featuring Jack Ryan.)One of my favorite aspects about Elmore Leonard’s writing was that by shifting perspectives constantly he had the ability to make you sympathize with a character so that the hero of the story might not be who you thought it was at the beginning of a book. Fans of television’s Justified who pick up Pronto for the first time will probably be confused as to why the first half of the book makes Raylan Givens look like a doofus being easily outwitted by Harry Arno. It’s only late in the story that Raylan emerges as the real main character while Harry fades into a whining supporting role. Leonard would even take a character that appeared sympathetic in one book and make them far less so in another. Probably the most famous example of this was how the main characters in The Switch became the bickering lowlifes of Rum Punch. (Better known by its movie title of Jackie Brown.) In the Leonard universe, being cool was the thing that counted most. Whether the lead was a cop or a crook, all sins were forgiven so long as they were cool about it. When they became uncool, they became unlikable and almost by default the villains of that story. Jack Ryan from The Big Bounce and Unknown Man #89 is unique because it seems like Leonard couldn’t decide if he was cool or not. Ryan certainly doesn’t seem like a good guy at the beginning of The Big Bounce where he’s in hot water after beating up a guy with a baseball bat. Ryan loses his job picking cucumbers and is lucky not to land in jail. He follows that up by brazenly stealing a bunch of wallets after walking into a house while the owners are partying on a nearby lakeside beach. However, a local resort owner sees something worthwhile in Ryan and hires him as a handyman. Jack isn’t entirely sure how he feels about this job or having someone trust him. New temptation arrives in the form of a woman named Nancy, the mistress of a wealthy businessman who is tired of hanging out at his lake house and has been entertaining herself by shooting out random windows and running other people off the road in her car. Nancy entices and teases Jack into engaging in some vandalism and house breaking with her, but she has a bigger goal in mind. Her lover is going to have a large amount of cash in his house, and she wants Jack to help her steal it. The Big Bounce was Leonard’s first contemporary crime novel, but he already had his hallmarks of sharp dialogue and a variety of offbeat characters engaging with each other while working their own angles. What makes it interesting is how it hinges on which way Jack will turn. Nancy seems like a kindred soul and that the two should instantly become a Bonnie & Clyde style duo. However, seeing Nancy’s random cruelty and disregard for other people seems to awaken Ryan’s seemingly dormant empathy. It’s a very different Jack Ryan that we meet in Unknown Man # 89. Set years later in Detroit, Jack has gone straight and is a process server with a reputation of being able to find almost anyone. Mr. Perez comes to town from Louisiana and hires Jack to find a man as part of a complicated stock scheme. A criminal named Virgil Royal is also looking for the same guy to recover some money he thinks he’s owed. When Jack meets the missing man’s drunken wife Denise, he finds himself falling for her and starts to screw up Perez’s business. To keep things on track, Perez brings in a redneck thug while pushing Jack to help him finalize the deal. Jack begins his own schemes to help Denise keep the money for herself even if she doesn’t want it. Another element has been added to Jack at this point with his being an admitted alcoholic who has been on the wagon. While he certainly liked his beer in The Big Bounce, there was never a sense that Jack was a drunk so that element seems to come out of nowhere and a bit clumsily used to establish an instant connection between him and Denise as he tries to help her get sober. There’s an odd arc to Jack through these two books with him starting as a cocky small-time petty crook whose ego has him on a permanent path of self-destruction who eventually comes to appreciate the value of someone giving him a break after meeting a truly bad woman. Then the subdued Jack Ryan who works an offbeat but honest job finds himself embroiled with criminals and doing some pretty shady stuff in order to help out an innocent woman. Or at least that’s what he says. It often feels like Jack is rebelling against Perez for his arrogant assumption that Jack has been bought and paid for. So there’s the return of a Jack Ryan acting in destructive ways out of pride, just in service of a nobler cause. Re-reading the two books back to back illustrates how Leonard's characters were very often not what they appeared to be, or even who they thought they were themselves.Originally posted at Kemper‘s Book Blog.

What do You think about Unknown Man #89 (2002)?

Not having read Leonard novels before, I was browsing the paperbacks and the library and saw such a collection I thought I would pick one up, and I'm glad I did. I was familiar with Leonard's work in the movies - Be Cool, Get Shorty, and Out of Sight - so I wasn't sure how good his writing was. I did enjoy this book, though the first thing that threw me off was when the book was written. It felt at times like it was from 2014, others from the early 1980's, which I think was the publication date. In this story, a process server is asked to find the owner of some stock that is worth a significant sum, and as you could imagine, the plot thickens from there. As I read this book, I couldn't help thinking of the Out of Sight movie and George Clooney in the role of Jack Ryan as I read this book, and that actually enhanced the book for me. Overall, a solid book to read.
—Jeff

UNKNOWN MAN NO. 89. (1977). Elmore Leonard. ****.This is basically a love story wrapped around by a criminal caper. Our protagonist is Jack C. Ryan. Ryan is in the business of serving warrants and summons. He makes a pretty good living – remembering that this is set in 1976 or so – by working for a variety of lawyers and the Detroit criminal courts. He is approached by a man, Mr. Perez, who wants Ryan to find a man for him. He claims that he has something of this man’s that the man doesn’t know about which is worth a significant amount of money. Ryan tries to find oout what it is, but Perez isn’t talking. After offering Ryan a significant amount of money to do the job, Ryan is off and running. He soon learns that the man he is after is a kind of man who shoots and kills people. He also locates his wife, a lush who hangs out in a variety of low-life bars. She is a confirmed alcoholic who has no idea where her husband is, and doesn’t care. Ryan soon falls for his quarry’s wife after helping her to kick the booze habit, but the two become involved in the whole scheme that Perez has up his sleeve. There are lots of killings by the men employed by Perez as he tries to locate the husband and lead him to a deal. The amount of money involved is $150,000, of which he wants half for finding it for the unknowing husband. Finding the husband is not an easy task, and Ryan never actually meets him, except as an occupant of a slab at the city mortuary. The action is hot and fast paced, and Leonard’s plotting is superb. Recommended.
—Tony

Like Ian Rankin (whose Black & Blue I recently reviewed and which, okay, was more teacher education Common Core navel-gazing than actual review), I’ve read a lot of Elmore Leonard recently without actually penning a full review. This is the fifth of his books I’ve read since September (and the tenth overall), and while I’ve loved each and every one of them, this is the first one I’ve engaged with on an emotional level. That immediately elevates it to the upper echelon of Leonard’s not-inconsiderable bibliography.So, for the uninitiated, what’s so great about Leonard? Let’s start here: Without fear of hyperbole, he’s the greatest crime writer of the 20th Century. Better than Chandler, better than Hammett, better than Ellroy, full stop, hands down. Better even – whisper it – than Agatha Christie (although I think I’d be more likely to classify her as a mystery writer). Leonard didn’t invent the genre, but he polished it to a high sheen. If you love crime novels – or even if you just appreciate them from a distance – Elmore does everything you love about them as well as it can be done. Tough guys? Check. Street-smart broads? You know it. Double crosses and long cons? Done and done, without breaking a sweat. Whip-smart dialogue that practically crackles on the page? Absolutely. And it’s all accomplished in unadorned prose that, like Kurt Vonnegut’s best work, seems effortless but is nearly impossible to replicate. (The quotes in boldface peppered throughout the rest of this review are some of Leonard’s best tips for being a good writer.)My most important piece of advice to all you would-be writers: When you write, try to leave out all the parts readers skip.All of this is present and accounted for in Unknown Man #89, only with some added emotional heft. Jack Ryan is a Detroit process server – so charming and ingratiating that the served often don’t mind – who’s hired by a New Orleans businessman named Mr. Perez to track down the recipient of some shares of stock. The stockholder turns up in the local morgue – toetagged with the words in the book’s title – and Ryan is then tasked by Perez with tracking down the deceased’s next of kin, his alcoholic wife, Denise.If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.Ryan eventually learns she’s living outside Detroit, and when he sets up shop there, he coincidentally runs into her at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting (which is, to be fair, the only phony note in the whole book). She’s cleaned up and tidied up, and what follows is a relatively quiet, surprisingly touching sequence where Ryan and Denise get to know each other, all without Ryan ever revealing who he is or why he’s there, choosing instead to enjoy his time with Denise rather than pursuing the job Perez set for him. Perez, of course, has developed plans of his own, and sets himself to stealing the shares of stock – and the money they represent – for himself. What follows is a series of feints and counter-feints, as Ryan and Denise set about double-crossing Perez with the help of a minor-league, big-hat-wearing criminal named Virgil Royal and a Detroit cop named Dick Speed.Write the book the way it should be written, then give it to somebody to put in the commas and shit.In some ways it’s boilerplate Leonard. Ryan is a tough-talker, Denise is too cool for school, and Perez (and his hired muscle, Raymond Gidre) are colorful con men who threaten their enemies by dangling them out a window. Virgil is sort of a dummy, and his sidekick Tunafish is one step down from that. But complicating things is the emotional gravity that has largely been absent from Leonard’s earlier works. Perez’s first gambit to steal the money from Denise is actually to hire Virgil (like I said, double- and triple-crosses, and no allegiance save one is solid) to get her drunk and have her sign the papers. The scene is, in a word, heartbreaking. We first meet Denise in Detroit as a miserable drunk, and her transformation to the optimistic artist Ryan encounters in Rochester is dramatic. But with one ill-intentioned, eminently selfish move, Denise is reduced once again to her messy, belligerent former self. Ryan handles this with panache, kicking Virgil out of Denise’s apartment, sobering her up, and leaving with her for Florida the next day, where the two of them can get out from under Perez’s suffocating influence. The halting romance that ensues is balanced on the knife edge between pragmatic and sentimental. It’s a graceful sequence that looks nothing like anything Leonard had previously written. It’s just a lull, though, as Ryan and Denise realize there’s a reckoning waiting for them in Detroit, and it needs to be resolved before they can ever truly settle down. Blood will be shed.I won’t read a book that starts with a description of the weather.As my first proper Elmore Leonard review, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the dialogue. It exists on another plane, the one where the characters might as well be speaking lines transcribed directly from a voice recorder planted in some seedy bar on the wrong side of the tracks. I could share any number of exchanges, but I’m partial to this one between Ryan and Virgil, as Ryan prepares to initiate the next part of his plan:"‘I don’t see you doing much,’ Ryan said. ‘You want something, but I don’t see you breaking your ass especially to get it.’‘I’m being patient,’ Virgil said, ‘waiting till everybody make up their mind. You want a real drink this time?’‘No, this is fine.’ Ryan still had half a Coke. He watched Virgil nod to the waitress. She was over at the bar where several black guys were sitting with their hats on, glancing at themselves in the bar mirror as they talked and jived around. ‘What’s this, the hat club?’ Ryan said. ‘There’s some pretty ones, but they can’t touch yours.’Virgil was looking at him from beneath the slightly, nicely curved brim of his uptown Stetson. ‘I get my money, what’s owed me, I’ll give it to you,’ he said.‘I’ll take it,’ Ryan said, ‘and everybody’ll be happy. If we can get you to do a little work.’‘What kind of work?’‘First, how much we talking about? What you say Bobby owes you?’‘Half.’‘Half of what I heard he got is nothing.’‘No, I’m telling you. Round it off, ten grand,’ Virgil said. ‘Now you tell me, how much we talking about? The whole deal.’"There’s a rhythm and cadence to all of Leonard’s dialogue – playful, but with the internal logic of really good jazz. It rings true, and unlike a lot of dialogue, it just sounds good when read aloud.Unknown Man #89 ends, as many of Leonard’s novels do, in a way that can best be termed “cautiously optimistic.” The bad guys get their comeuppance, the good guys get their reward – although it might look different than they thought it would – and the moral of the story, if there is one, seems to be this: “Be careful who you trust.” But this ending resonates more for me than in Leonard’s other books because, for the first time, the main characters have suffered enough for us to want them to be happy.Read all my reviews at goldstarforrobotboy.net
—Rob

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