Riding the Rap

by Elmore Leonard

'Wicked and irresistible . . . Leonard is a genius' New York Times

Palm Beach playboy Chip Ganz needs money - fast. He has spiralling debts, and his mother's gravy-train has just derailed. So he has a plan: he's going to find somebody rich, and take them hostage. With the help of an ex-con, a psycho gardener and the beautiful psychic Reverend Dawn, he chooses bookmaker Harry Arno as the lucky victim. The trouble is, Harry can scam with the best of them. And that's not the only problem. US Marshal Raylan Givens is sleeping with Harry's ex girlfriend, Joyce, and she wants Harry found...

• ISBN10: 0385324170
• ISBN13: 9780385324175
• Publish Date: 9 March 1998 (first published 1 May 1995)
• Publish Status: Out of Stock
• Out of Print: 18 October 2003
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 294
• Language: English

Reviews

[jamiereadthis]

I like Raylan so much in this one.

I mean, I always like Raylan. I love Raylan. But I first picked this book up a couple of years ago without having read Pronto, and ended up skimming a lot of it when I realized I needed to read Pronto first. My impression, back then, was that it was a lot of fun but shallow waters. Not all that much in the way of character depth.

But, man. What is the opposite of that? As fun as it is (so much fun), there’s layers upon layers here. The waters are still, and they run deep. The change in Raylan just from Pronto to Riding The Rap is substantial: he’s so much more comfortable, collected, aware, assured, so much more Raylan. It’s all the private fallout from shooting Tommy Bucks. It’s all plucking at the threads of these finest of fine lines. It’s all the Raylan I know and love.

Raylan had to tell her why he couldn’t go in to investigate without permission or a search warrant, and this was the part that didn’t make sense to her. If he had no trouble shooting a man seated at a table with him in a restaurant, why couldn’t he walk into someone’s house?
He said to her, “Why don’t you take my word for it?” tired of trying to explain distinctions, the gray areas in what he did for a living.

I also love: not only is this the straight-up sequel to Pronto, we get a sequel to Maximum Bob in the process. Well, for the first chapter, anyway. It involves a Crowe, it gives the book its title, and Justified lifts it basically line-by-line for Dewey, so yes, it’s glorious. (It’s the part I remember from the first time I picked up Riding The Rap. But now: all the layers.)