Today’s Book: Riding the Rap

No doubt about it, Elmore Leonard is the modern master of cool heroes and squirrelly bad guys. In Riding the Rap, he gives us US Marshall Raylan Givens wondering where his girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend is (and wondering just how strong that ex is, too). Using his brains, badge, a cute psychic (who’s sleeping with one or more of the baddies and wants to sleep with the marshall), one of the baddies’s girlfriends, and some of the baddies’ own stupidity, he finds the prize inside the box. Riding the rap, by the way, means paying what you owe, in jail.

Leonard, if the name somehow doesn’t come to mind, also wrote the novels on which the films Get Shorty, Mr. Majestyk (Bronson is bad!), and Jackie Brown are based. His site has good material on what appear to be all his books and films as well as an extensive biography.