When Federal Marshall Raylan Givens squares off against a known offender, he'll warn the man, "If I have to pull my gun I'll shoot to kill." Except this time he finds the offender naked in a bathtub, doped up and missing his kidneys.
Raylan knows there's big money in body parts, but by the time he finds out who's making the cuts, he's lying naked in a bathtub himself, Layla, the cool transplant nurse, about to go for his kidneys.
It turns out all the bad guys Raylan is after are girls this time: the nurse who collects kidneys and sells them for ten grand apiece; Carol Conlan, the mine company executive who comes to Harlan County to sell mountaintop removal, shoots a miner who wastes her time, then meets the miner's widow in a scene you won't forget.
The third girl's only offense is missing a court date. Jackie Nevada plays high-stakes poker for a living and is last seen in the shower with Raylan.
Dark and droll, Raylan is pure Elmore Leonard-a page-turner filled with natural-sounding dialogue and sly suspense, the hallmarks of this modern master. Title Info. Chapter 1.
Chapter 2.
Chapter 3.
Chapter 4.
Chapter 5.
Chapter 6.
Chapter 7.
Chapter 8.
Chapter 9.
Chapter 10.
Chapter 11.
Chapter 12.
Chapter 13.
Chapter 14.
Chapter 15.
Chapter 16.
Chapter 17.
Chapter 18.
Chapter 19.
Chapter 20.
Chapter 21.
Chapter 22.
Chapter 23.
Chapter 24.
Chapter 25.
Chapter 26.
Chapter 27.
Chapter 28.
Chapter 29.
Chapter 30.
Chapter 31.
Chapter 32.
"In addition to kinetic storytelling and spot-on dialogue, Leonard has a cool wit…lively, idiosyncratic characters…It becomes clear that Leonard is having fun with the structure of the crime novel, tossing aside the rules of cohesion in favor of keeping his narrative light on its feet, so it can run in unexpected directions. It's a joy to watch characters from the earlier assignments come back into play."
"Wonderful…[Leonard] continues to be unpredictable. His plot twists are real twisty, and he eliminates some prime suspects before the book reaches its midpoint, only to come up with equally plausible, equally nasty new ones."
"A real corker…Raylan is Leonard's best of the twenty-first century-good stuff from first page to last…Rat-a-tat banter dominates."
"A punchy mix of crime and Kentucky coal-mine sociology…One of Leonard's best thrillers in years."
"With a practised ease and the craft of more than half a century of novelistic composition, Leonard works like the Picasso of crime fiction…Raylan is as close as it gets to creating the complete illusion of unmediated entertainment on the page."
"Fast-paced, darkly humorous…[Has] the author's trademark witty dialogue and adeptness at developing quirky, memorable characters…Readers will want to see more."
"James' performance is not to be missed: his range of dialects and personalities is so impressive that listeners may think this audio features a full cast."
"Leonard's Stetson-wearing US Marshal Raylan Givens has been demoted to rural Kentucky, but that doesn't reduce the killing and excitement that always seem to swirl around him. Narrator Brian D'Arcy James expertly voices a broad range of characters…James also enhances Leonard's famously pithy dialogue with perfect pacing and timing. The TV series Justified is based on the Raylan Givens character."
"Features plenty of Raylan, the fast-drawing, iconoclastic lawman who's never at a loss for words or bullets…Fans will willingly wolf down [Leonard's] signature dialogue and delightfully warped characters."
