"Psycho mama's boy Teddy Magyk has a serious jones for the Miami cop who put him away for raping a senior citizen -- but he wants to hit Vincent Mora where it really hurts before killing him. So when a beautiful Puerto Rican hooker takes a swan dive from an Atlantic City high-rise and Vincent naturally shows up to investigate the questionable death of his 'special friend,' Teddy figures he's got his prey just where he wants him. But the A.C. dazzle is blinding the Magic Man to a couple of very hard truths: Vincent Mora doesn't forgive and forget ... and he doesn't die easy."

Mr.Wonderful Writes:

Glitz by Elmore Leonard is simply a fun and easy to read book of the crime genre containing no lessons to steal away with or heavy philosophical points to ponder. Giltz is pretty much as the 'From the Publisher' statement above says it is.

It is easy to see why author Leonard's works are so often transformed into screenplays. Glitz started out with a bang, literally, and had me laughing out as Vincent, the police detective, began to sound like Woody Allen wearing a shoulder harness for his 9mm automatic and possessing a wicked right hook.

Elmore Leonard paints the picture and, in a delightful manner, shoots his character's messages across with very few adjectives and adverbs, so that the reader doesn't feel he is reading some formula-derived 'paint-by-numbers' novel.

If a person needs to pick up a book or two for the weekend, the beach, any trip to the airport or for the typical waits in either the lines of the government Social Security Administration or Post Office, you can't go wrong by purchasing a non-pretentious Elmore Leonard paperback to enjoy.

Typos:

Page 290: "...would put you in the clear.  not all the way, but you..." Begun: 01/10/2008   Finished: 01/11/2008 Purchased: January 2008
Where: Half-Price Books

B&N Net Rank: 156,452
Pages: Paperback, 302pp
Cover price: $13.00
1986 Cover: $4.95
Purchase price: $2.48(new)

"In the Utah desert, Brother Francis of the Albertian Order of Leibowitz has made a miraculous discovery: the relics of the martyr Isaac Leibowitz himself, including the blessed blueprint and the sacred shopping list. They may provide a bright ray of hope in a terrifying age of darkness, a time of ignorance and genetic monsters that are the unholy aftermath of the Flame Deluge. But as the spellbinding mystery at the core of this novel unfolds, it is the search itself—for meaning, for truth, for love—that offers hope to a humanity teetering on the edge of an abyss."

Mr.Wonderful Writes:

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, is an excellent read.

Written in the late 1950s, reading Canticle brings back the every day, never-ending, twenty-four hour threat of world-ending nuclear conflict we lived with during the Cold War. And it reminds us, who were around during those times, upon reading this story, centered around a Catholic monastery and seeing text littered with Latin phrases, the days when Latin (mother to all the Romance languages) was studied, even in public schools.

I couldn't deter the smile that crept across my face, as I learned a character had lost a bet when he had come in second at the game of mumbly peg, a knife throwing contest popular during the middle of the last century prior to the discovery of 'dangerous' lead in paint, hazardous monkeybars, lifesaving seatbelts or XBox 360s. Yes, those were simpler times, when this boy of five could crawl up onto the sturdy and felt-covered shelf behind the rear seats in our four steel-doored 1951 Kaiser sedan and fall asleep bathed in the rays of the mild Arizona winter sun.

'Canticle' which means religious chant, is unabashedly Catholic, as is demonstrated when a brother fights for a natural death of a radioactive and terminally ill mother and daughter pair, rather than give in to the quick, convenient, and no charge 'Soylent Green-style' euthanasia. Canticle also meets another one of my preferred old-school moral criteria for Science Fiction, and that being that there are no sexual copulations within its covers.

Canticle is not a Harry Potter 'type' happy ending book, and as Joe Bob Briggs says about good horror movies, "Anyone can die, at anytime and anyplace." For a book written almost fifty years ago, author Miller does an excellent job of predicting future technology. And he did not make the mistake I've seen often in mediocre SciFi books, that of centering the majority of the action on the 'predicted' technology, which, if the author has guessed wrong, and when read in later decades simply renders the book just silly.

Covering a span of six hundred years on Earth, the book exposes the unrelenting greed, lust for power and pride of a few men that will forever threaten those wishing to live in peace and, if their weapons are sophisticated enough, threaten continued civilization on this planet.

Canticle offers to the reader a compelling, effortless writing style that, after a few moments, other than the turning of pages, one doesn't feel like one is reading. It allowed this reader to develop affections for believable characters and presented entirely believable future technologies, while at the same time the strong moral code adhered to by the clergy of the Catholic faith, in this day of anything goes, even for this lapsed Lutheran, was quite refreshing.

I bestow A Canticle for Leibowitz my highest recommendation and have awarded it the coveted Five Sun MustoWn (Must Own) Award® from the MW Review of Books.

Begun: 12/24/2007   Finished: 12/31/2007 Purchased: December 2007
Where: barnesandnoble.com
USED FROM OUR AUTHORIZED SELLERS
B&N Net Rank: 20,801
Pages: Paperback, 302pp
Cover price: $7.50
1988 price: $4.95
Purchase price: $3.49 (used)

"All the Pretty Horses - the first volume of the Borders Trilogy - tells of young John Grady Cole, the last of a long line of Texas ranchers. Across the border Mexico beckons - beautiful and desolate, rugged and cruelly civilized. With two companions, he sets off on an idyllic, sometimes comic adventure, to a place where dreams are paid for in blood."

Mr.Wonderful Writes:

All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy is a great read. If you like horses, cowboys, the American Southwest, Mexico, black-tressed, straight-backed horse riding Spanish senorita's, adventure, intrigue and romance this is your book. And even though it is advertised as one of a trilogy of books, each title stands entirely on its own. It also would help to know the name and particular use of every rope knot used by a cowboy and read Spanish so that you might also understand most every word on every page.

This is another book that I feel unworthy to critique but anyone who has read it already is aware of that.

At first, being a perfectionist self-editor, I was upset that there were no quotation marks when characters spoke:  I appreciate you lightin the candle, he said.

And then leaving out the apostrophes on contractions really put me on edge:
You know it aint what I wanted dont you?

But soon enough I learned to discard my prejudices and even got fairly decent at translating the Spanish text, usually made easy enough by what was occurring, written in English around it. As a matter of fact, I went out and bought a stack of tortillas after finishing the book. But actually, reading without the punctuation, without the quotation marks somehow brought me deeper into the story, like I was experiencing it, not simply reading a book.

All the Pretty Horses is about 1949 horse-driven adventure of three young men, the oldest being seventeen, and their journey into Mexico where they meet the good, the bad and the ugly. The protagonist, John Grady, is made of the same stuff that the men and women who settled the 1800s West. He is one super-tough "Sum buck."

All the Pretty Horses is one Western everyone should experience and I very much enjoyed reading it.

Begun:11/23/2007   Finished:12/05/2007 Purchased: September 2007
Where: Powells.com
B&N Net Rank: 3,529
Pages: Trade paperback, 302pp
Cover price: $13.00
Purchase price: $9.95 (used)