This author is well lauded by his peers. Stephen King called him 'the Great American Writer'. He is known for writing in a way that leaves nothing for the reader to skip and making the dialogue so real that it doesn't feel like writing at all. This may be true but I didn't appreciate his style. It certainly didn't feel like writing but when the dialogue jumps from one person to another with little holding the conversation together it gets quite jumbled. In a movie it would work. In novel it just confusing. I am not saying that script dialogue has no place in a novel but it should be supplemented with more traditional ways of letting the reader keep some sense of reality about it.
Furthermore, the plot was fairly non-existent in this novel. We are told what happened in the first chapters and we spend the rest of the time waiting for the bad guy to get caught. They are not smart and do not try to evade capture. Not exactly a nail biter. I was expecting a 'whodunnit' and got a 'thisiswhathappenedandithappenedinaveryboringandrealisticway'.
I don't need to find another Leonard novel but I am grateful for the adaptations his work has brought into being.
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