Tue 26 May 2009
ELMORE LEONARD – The Switch.
Paperback original: Bantam, 1978. First UK and only hardcover edition: Secker & Warburg, 1979. Many paperback reprint editions.
Two ex-cons named Ordell and Louis, obviously too refined to be winners in a Cheech and Chong look-alike contest, kidnap a suburban Detroit housewife, a tennis mother named Mickey, whose husband Frank is a crooked contractor and secretly planning on leaving her and skipping off to the Caribbean.
Not surprisingly, he quite happily ignores the ransom demands, sending their dreams of a cool million disappearing upwards in clouds of thin, billowing smoke.
Detroit’s not a very nice city, and Leonard knows it and tells it. But while the ending of his story comes as a subtle sort of surprise, the looseness with which he establishes it pretty much undermines the effect. The tale’s as shaky as the Dawsons’ marriage from the start.
(slightly revised)
[UPDATE] 05-26-09. When I began checking out the bibliographic data for this book, it caught me by surprise, as it may have you too, but I’d forgotten that many of Elmore Leonard’s earliest books were published as paperback originals. In fact, unless I’m badly mistaken, The Switch has never appeared as a US hardcover, as I said above.
Back in 1978 I was still adding a “letter grade” at the end of the reviews I wrote. I assigned a “C plus” to this one, which makes it above average, but not by much. If I were to read it again, I don’t know whether I’d be so tough on the book now, or if it really is one of Leonard’s lesser works. If so, perhaps that’s the reason for the lack of a hardcover.
Or a movie, for that matter. Based only on my description of it, it sounds to me as though Hollywood ought to have snatched The Switch up long before now.
May 26th, 2009 at 8:33 pm
I’m probably in a small minority, but I like Leonard’s westerns and historical novels (The Moonshine War, Cuba Libre, The Hot Kid), and offbeat stuff like Mr. Majestyk better than his highly praised crime novels, though I like some better than others. I’m not sure, but Switch may have appeared in hardcovers in an omnibus edition of Leonard’s crime novels.
Don’t get me wrong, Leonard deserves the critical acclaim, and at his best no one else does what he can, but I like him better as an occasional treat and not a steady diet.
May 26th, 2009 at 9:28 pm
David
I’ve not read as many of Leonard’s crime novels as I know I should have, but based on the ones I have read — which may have been the wrong ones — I’d have to say that I’m in the same minority as you.
Good but not great, as the old saying goes, but I fully expect the next Elmore Leonard I read will knock my socks off.
— Steve