110 books like Frank Ryan

Elmore Leonard knew the vagaries of the movie business back to front, and he serves them up on a platter of delicious satire in this story about an East Coast loan shark, Chili Palmer, who comes to Los Angeles chasing a deadbeat debtor and winds up in his own fractured fairy tale version of the Hollywood dream.

Chili’s an endearing character, street smart with a unique blend of humility and self-confidence. When his collection job throws him into company with a group of movie people, he sees them and their milieu with clear-eyed objectivity.

Talking to an underworld associate, he says, “The movie business, you can do anything you want because there’s nobody in charge.” Leonard’s mastery of dialogue and character, along with his wit and sly affection for the industry he’s skewering combine to make this book a complete delight. 

In the dark world of hardboiled literature, anything can happen at any time for any reason—or no reason at all. In my view, that makes things easy for this debut novel about an unemployed LA factory worker named Easy Rawlins, and that makes things challenging for the story—for the character—as well. 

A man with money and power offers Easy a job looking for a missing blond-haired, white-skinned beauty. Rawlins faces only two problems: He has no experience as a private detective, and he needs to do the detecting with black skin in a segregated, remarkably unequal 1948 America. 

But I think Mosley has found the perfect genre for his character, one whose tough and humane and even psychologically insightful qualities have enabled him to adjust to, learn from, and survive in a place where laws can break out or disappear, depending on the color of his skin. Rawlins finds it… show more.

As a woman who was raised to have a moral compass, I am outraged whenever someone in authority abuses their power and gets away with it.

While I don’t condone revenge, nonetheless, I have to admit I cheered when lewd, lecherous, law-bending Florida Judge Robert “Maximum Bob” Gibbs finally gets his comeuppance and is judged guilty by a grudge-bearing malefactor and sentenced to death-by alligator, a unique means of execution, to say the least.

Ingenious, more than slightly off-kilter Elmore Leonard is the undisputed king of criminal mayhem. His wacky, raucous Maximum Bob is a delightfully dark humorous tale chocked full of zany characters; a group of magnificent miscreants Mr. Leonard created, knowing his readers would love to hate.

While this is a short story, not a novel, it is, in my opinion, the quintessential psychological Western. Depicting the struggle of an ordinary man saddled with extraordinary tasks, to maintain his honor and his values in the face of temptation, it delves into the minds of the two participants, and takes the reader on a wild ride as they wait for the train. Tension you could cut with a knife replaces action, keeping the reader on the edge of his/her seat until the end.

Detective CW Sughrue was working the topless bar scene well before Jack Reacher wandered across the literary landscape. But unlike Reacher, Sughrue carries the sins of mankind on his own shoulders, just as likely to solve a crime as to curl up in a cheap motel with a bottle of whisky. 

He begins the book looking for a trouble author (is there any other kind?), but once he finds him, things get really messy…

The first time I saw a Coen Brothers’ movie I felt like I was already familiar with their style. It’s probably because I had already read Crumley’s novels with their existential sadness and brutal violence just-barely-buoyed by clever plotting and pitch-black humor.

This book simply knocked me out when I first read it, mostly because the characters were so gripping and vivid.

Philip Marlowe was the quintessential hard-boiled private eye working to find justice in a rotten world—a sort of modern-day Don Quixote. I was also enthralled by Chandler’s depiction of a morally bankrupt Los Angeles, full of shysters, criminals, and false messiahs.

I admired the dogged hero’s determination to—despite numerous temptations not to—get at the truth of the matter. Ironically, when justice is served, no one is better off for it.

‘Bug’ Montage was once the sharpest get-away driving east of the Mississippi, but he had put all that behind him to become a loving family man, getting by on an honest wage as a motor mechanic. When Bug’s respectable life starts to fall apart, a former associate offers him one last job with a huge payout.

The temptation of earning a quick buck is too strong to ignore, but can Bug survive?

Elmore Leonard is the master of the dialogue-driven novel.

In Pronto, the US Marshal Raylan Givens, who wears a cowboy hat and is a quick draw, defends a former bookie who is on the run in Italy. It’s the basis of the TV show Justified, which is also a great legal thriller.

Leonard always gives an authentic voice to his characters, whether they are a bookmaker on the run or a Marshal from Kentucky.

How can I not include an Elmore Leonard title in a list of favorite novels about murder and matters of the heart?

Of course, no compliment by me of Mr. Leonard will be anywhere in the vicinity of new, but I will add to the heap of praise of the man that in this particular novel of his, the snappiness of the dialogue, the overall wit, and the surprising nature of the twists and turns will always strike me as ideals to strive for as I write my own noir.

After all, writers can dream, can’t they?

I liked this book because of its unique plot. After the American Civil War, ex-trooper and sharp shooter Valdez is working as a part-time small town sheriff. He gets on the bad side of a wealthy rancher who has a gang beat him up and leave him for dead out in the desert.

But after this excellent opening, I love what happens next.  Valdez is a survivor: he returns to face off against incredible odds, to regain his honor and see that justice prevails.