On “52 Pickup” by Elmore Leonard ****

This is the first crime thriller I've read by Leonard, though of course I've seen several movies based on his work, movies, which I've read, often just lift his dialogue whole. Indeed, this work is quite cinematic: built in scenes, around people and events, not a lot of summary or exposition. As with the two westerns I've read by Leonard, this was a page turner, thrilling pretty much from about five pages in until the very end.

So Mitchell is the owner of a car parts manufacturer, a man who for a brief period uncharacteristically ends up having an affair with a woman one year older than his daughter. Three neerdowells decide that Mitchell is the perfect object of an extortion scheme. You see, the gal he's been carrying on with, she was into adult modeling and, as such, has links to a shady underworld. The three guys hatch a plan, based on photographs they've gotten of the couple together, to insist that Mitchell pay them $100k or the info gets leaked to the press, the family, the company, whatever works to make his life dreadful.

Mitchell, though, is a tough nut, and he's not sure he's ready simply to pay up. He doesn't want to go to the police, either, because things could get messy. He doesn't want to put his family through all that. When he doesn't comply, on time, the three crooks murder the girl and arrange things so that the crime can be easily pinned on Mitchell. Now they want $100k every year. Mitchell says he'll think about it and continues along his usual way, delaying and generally being cool to their attempts to intimidate him. This involves, for example, coming clean with his wife, and it evenually involves him turning the three crooks against one another through various nefarious means so that in essence they do the work of solving the problem for him.

The plot thrills, and the characters are well drawn, and the dialogue is fresh. What's not to like? I was ready to hand this five stars, but the ending was a letdown. The story, I suppose, is over, but there are all kinds of ramifications to what Mitchell has done. He does so much, supposedly, to save his family, but in the process, his wife suffers terrible consequences; he doesn't go to the police, but at some point not going to the police seems more a plot point than mere logic, and in the end, the police will be involved, and how exactly is Mitchell going to come clean? He has a lot of great plans, but it's obvious the crooks know where he lives and have access to his wife and family. They're capable of killing—or at least Mitchell actually believes they are—so why would he not safeguard them, send them away, or whatever? It's these sort of issues that pulled me away from genre fiction when younger, and while I can enjoy thrills, the lack of emotional link to the characters and their feelings makes for a less compelling work.