Book Review

By Derryll White

Leonard, Elmore (1969).  The Big Bounce.

                  “Boy, do they screw up!” – Anthony Lane

Nancy Hayes is a mean woman, simply because nothing matters to her except where the next hit of adrenaline will come from. Nancy uses – not smack or psychedelics – people. Nancy is a shark, pretending to be a mindless, appealing young woman. You probably know a Nancy or two.  They pass through your life, and hopefully into the night without legacy.  This was not the case for Jack Ryan.

Jack Ryan is the quintessential Elmore Leonard character, making do in a world that doesn’t seem to want to give him a break. Nancy is not the best thing that ever happened to him.  She is a thrill seeker who is most fulfilled by pulling others into her crazy adventures into destruction and the manipulation of others. Jack Ryan survives Nancy’s manipulations.

Leonard is excellent at letting his characters wander in realistic ways, talking like real people. ‘The Big Bounce’ was his first published crime novel after many successes with westerns set in Arizona and New Mexico. Shortly after this novel he published perhaps his strongest western, ‘Valdez Is Coming.’

Elmore Leonard died in 2013, in Michigan where ‘The Big Bounce’ is set.  He died at 87, having published more than 45 novels and many short stories and screenplays.  Twenty-six of his works were adapted to the screen. But he is most approachable and most interesting in his preferred form, the novel.

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Excerpts from the novel:

REASONS – It was wrong to break into somebody’s house, okay, but he wasn’t taking anything they really needed.  A TV set, a mink jacket, a couple of watches, all insured; maybe they’d get two-fifty, three hundred for the load.  The insurance company pays off and the guy buys another TV set, another fur for his wife, and a couple of watches, everything at a discount because he’s a big shot and has all kinds of ins.  The guy probably got the money to buy the stuff in the first place by screwing somebody in business.  It was all right in business but it wasn’t all right going through a basement window.  Why not.

THE FORCE – “I don’t get that,” Ryan said, “going out with him.”

    “It was something to do.”  She was pouring a glass of Cold Duck at the table.  “I guess to see if he had the nerve more than anything else.”

    “You’ve got a thing about nerve.”

    She turned with the glass in her hand.  “What else is there? I mean that you can count on.”

– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them.  When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.

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