Product Description

Roommates Kelly and Chloe are enjoying their lives and their downtown Detroit loft just fine. Kelly is a Victoria's Secret catalog model. Chloe is an escort, until she decides to ditch her varied clientele in favor of a steady gig as girlfriend to eighty-four-year-old retired lawyer Tony Paradiso, a.k.a. Mr. Paradise.

Evenings at Mr. Paradise's house, there's always an old Michigan football game on TV. And when Chloe's around, there's a cheerleader, too, complete with pleated skirt and blue-and-gold pompoms. One night Chloe convinces Kelly to join in the fun, along with Montez Taylor, Tony's smooth-talking right-hand man.

But things go awry and before the end of the evening there will be two corpses, two angry hit men, one switch of identity, a safe-deposit box full of loot up for grabs, and, fast on the scene, detective Frank Delsa, who now has a double homicide -- and a beautiful, willful witness -- to add to his already heavy caseload.

With a cool cast, snappy dialogue, and all the twists and turns fans crave, Mr. Paradise is Elmore Leonard at home in Detroit and sharper than ever.

Amazon.com Review

It's a dubious proposition from the outset, destined to lead to trouble: Chloe Robinette, a high-end former Detroit call girl, asks her lingerie model roommate, Kelly Barr, to help her entertain a wealthy octogenarian trial lawyer named Anthony Paradiso. By "entertain," she means donning a cheerleader's skimpy skirt, but going topless, and doing rah-rah routines beside a TV set while Paradiso--"Mr. Paradise"--watches videotaped football games. A bit kinky for Kelly's taste, but she finally goes along--only to be caught in the middle of a contract hit on Paradiso and Chloe. Rather than tell what little she knows of these crimes, Kelly buys into a scheme, concocted by Paradiso's right-hand man, Montez Taylor, that could lead to a huge payoff from the lawyer's estate. But only if the 27-year-old Kelly can convincingly assume Chloe's identity ...

Elmore Leonard, who's made his career writing about not-too-bright bad guys, fills Mr. Paradise with several memorable specimens of that breed. In addition to Montez, who'd resented his politically incorrect boss for cutting him out of his will, there's also a bottom-feeding defense attorney, Avern Cohn, who runs a murder-for-hire operation on the side, and his well-armed employees of the month, "tough monkeys" Carl Fontana and Arthur Krupa. Less credibly and entertainingly crafted is Frank Delsa, the widowed homicide detective whose hunt for Paradiso's killers is complicated by his attraction to the curvilinear Kelly. This romantic subplot is overly predictable and deflates early expectations that the cunning young model is playing some deeper game here, working an angle that neither Delsa nor Montez anticipates.

After penning a string of character-propelled novels set in Florida (including Glitz, Out of Sight, and the particularly winning La Brava), it's good to see Leonard exploiting the Detroit backdrop again, as he did so expertly in a few of his earlier successes (City Primeval and Killshot, for instance). Yet while Mr. Paradise is rich with comic dialogue and cop-shop color, it never goes beyond the expectations of a Leonard work. This author is too good not to take more chances. --J. Kingston Pierce

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Travelogue Detroit        Rating:

I confess that, although I read Elmo Leonard's earlier novels, the ones set in Detroit and Miami, as soon as they came off the press, I somewhat lost interest in his Hollywood-period stories, because they simply didn't seem as gripping -- too formulaic. But "Mr. Paradise" is once again set in my hometown, and it's so fine, it makes me want to throw my head back and bray!

It may be that I simply identify with the locale, but it seems to me that the situations and events depicted herein are just as true of any decaying city in the USA -- which, I suppose, means every big city. Leonard is thus an artist who has captured urban America as precisely and unmistakably as Steinbeck did with rural California or Faulkner with Mississippi or Zola in France. But unlike those writers, Leonard dispenses with the baroque ornamentation and excursus, the excessive description and reflection, and clinically focuses on the open sore. The plot thus advances like a late freight, faster than you are able to turn the pages, and you don't dare skip so much as a sentence.

The national periodicals have celebrated the realistic dialogue of such writers as Tom Wolfe and Richard Price, but them guys is amateurs compared to the Dutchman. He not only has a superb ear for the spoken word, but the rhythms are likewise perfect. He's the best by far and bar none. It's the way people speak and behave here and now, and his books should be placed in time capsules -- or shot into space (if nothing else, as a caution to extraterrestrials to avoid this place).

It is my glad duty to report that everything depicted is exactly as he describes -- from the locations of gas stations to the interiors of bars. The gang names are real (e.g., the Cash Flow Posse), and believe me, the citizenry is genuinely that stupid.

There's also a joke contained in the novel that no one has noted. Avern Cohen, an attorney who's one of the villains, is a real person who's a local attorney. (When I was 23, he came and bailed me out of jail, but he was mad because I then took my parents' advice and pled guilty -- kids, never listen to your parents.) But unlike the Murder-Inc. boss of that name in the novel, the real Avern Cohen went on to be appointed a judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. He resides not too far from Leonard's home in the northern suburbs. I guess that's kinda cool to write your neighbor into a best-selling novel.

One of Leonard's best        Rating:

This is Elmore Leonard's best book since "Maximum Bob" in 1993. Leonard is amazing. He was 79 years old when this book was published, yet his crackling writing style, his imaginative plotting, and his unerring ear for dialogue are as keen as ever. He returns to his native Detroit, a frequent setting for his novels, for this one. The plot need not be revealed here lest it be spoiled for a prospective reader. Suffice it to say that there is an array of colorful characters: call girls, high priced lingerie models, mobsters, bumbling hired killers, interesting supporting characters, and of course police detectives. An excellent read for anyone.

Leonard Returns to 5-Star Form        Rating:

This is around the 12th or 13th Leonard novel I've read, and it's been several years since I really enjoyed one from start to finish. Happily, his latest Detroit-set caper is pitch perfect and a ton of fun. Things kick off with typical Leonard oddballness: retired and ultra-wealthy lawyer Mr. Paradiso likes to watch tapes of old University of Michigan football games, and pays an escort $5,000 a month to dress up as a topless UM cheerleader for these sessions. One night she talks her model roommate into coming along for a special twin cheerleader session, and of course that's the night two hit men come to whack Mr. Paradiso.

As in so many of Leonard's books, the criminals don't really have their acts together. The hit was supposed to be called off for the night, but the hit man's wife didn't pass along the message, and so the escort is added to the body count, complicating things. However, things get even more complicated when the old man's personal assistant strong-arms the model into swapping identities with the dead escort -- and soon Detective Frank Delsa is on the scene, smelling a rat. It's one of those crime capers where the suspense comes not from knowing who did what (that's all cut and dried), but how it's all going to play out, and how Delsa is going to put the pieces together. There's a host of highly entertaining and distinctive supporting characters, including the two hit men, a smalltime snitch, the assistant, an seemingly-decrepit butler, Paradiso's family, and a crooked lawyer.

The plotting is both intricate and seemingly effortless, as the story unfurls in a breezy, unhurried tone with plenty of humor and violence. Tonally, it's very very similar to "Out of Sight", with everyone playing angles, the cop who knows what's what but is letting it play out, and the flirty romance between Delsa and the model, and plenty of sly dialogue. It's nice to see the master can still knock one out of the park.

Another good one for Elmore Leonard fans        Rating:

With Elmore Leonard, you usually know what you are going to get. Leonard's trademark is crisp and witty dialogue, unusual characters, and a plot that reveals itself in surprising ways. This book is no exception. It is not one of his most intriguing works - I found the storyline a little more predictable than normal for Leonard - but it is still a very worthwhile read.

If you are an Elmore Leonard fan, you will enjoy this book. If you have never read Leonard's work, I would recommend starting with Get Shorty, Rum Punch, or Pagan Babies first and come back to this one.

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