The Hot Kid (2005)

Elmore Leonard descends into self-satire.

Let's compare and contrast The Hot Kid with Get Shorty. In GS, we get some biographical background on some characters as needed. In HK, we get biographical background on all characters whether it's needed or not. We might be told, say, that a minor character's family emigrated from Italy four generations ago and lived in New England for a while before moving to Kansas. This isn't necessary for plot or characterization and never comes up again. What the hell? In GS this sort of thing was disciplined and deft, and we never got more than was appropriate for plot or characterization. Here it's included excessively, without purpose.

A similar point is true of the dialogue. One gets the sense that someone is satirizing the Elmore Leonard dialogue style. Sure, people in real life don't speak with perfect grammar, but you can push "realism" too far. If veritably every utterance has an elided word or a grammatical error, there's a problem. One might as well include all the "Umm"s and "Er"s and so forth that occur in real-world speech. Fiction has always been a compromise between realism and clarity, and the early Leonard had a great ability to handle that tension. The author of The Hot Kid pushes it way too far in the direction of "realism." Actually, people speak so sloppily here that it seems unrealistic to this reader.

It's as if Leonard sat down to write, forgot what he was doing, and so decided to re-read some of his earlier works to figure out what kind of author he is. He then tried to copy the style he encountered in those earlier novels, like a 17-year-old novice who didn't really understand the purpose of the style's elements. I actually have doubts about whether, if this were entered anonymously in a "Write like Elmore Leonard" contest, it would win. In other words, it doesn't even come across as a particularly good Elmore Leonard imitation.

The story goes nowhere. There are no surprises. There's a boring story that ends as we expect. Overall, there's no point to the thing. ( )

Shoot-em-up Oklahoma in the '30s bank-robber days. Title refers to a US Marshal who was only 15 when he shot his first thief. (He IS hot; I'll look for more stories about him.) Picked this book up because I was in the mood for something silly; it didn't disappoint. Only problem: so many goofy characters it's hard to remember who's who if you can't read this book in one day.

I 'll fess up that this sub species as it were of the Crime, Mystery, Thriller genre is not one I'm at all keen on. I had another Leonard work on the bookshelf and had seen some decent praise for his work here on LT. But it was learning, again here on LT, that the FX series Justified was based on Leonard's work (I believe a combination of this series and a short story Fire in the Hole) that led me to jump up and get this read. I was pleasantly surprised that I really liked this. Leonard gives a bit of an almost insider's look at the wild west of the Bonnie and Clyde era, choosing not to focus on so many of the well known gangsters of that time, instead he hones in on some of the lesser-knowns and the main character's interaction with those. Carl Webster is without a doubt a member of the White Hat gang, traveling on the Law & Order side of the road, but it's Leonard's ability to let Carl wander towards the middle and get close at times to the bad side that's the most interesting aspect. ( )

Fun book. Great time period stuff from the early 30's and the Bonnie & Clyde era. Great characters as usual for Leonard. ( )

We meet The Hot Kid as a teenage boy, the son of a rich, Oklahoma farmer and oilman. He witnesses a robbery and double homicide that doesn't particularly bother him but is traumatized when the bad guy steals his ice-cream cone. A dead shot, The Kid kills his first man at age 15. He grows up quick and hard and mean. He becomes a federal marshal, shoots all the bad guys in Oklahoma, marries a whore, and apparently lives happily ever after. That's it. That's the whole story.

The Hot Kid is certainly not a detective novel but more the terse biography of a human killing machine. It doesn't qualify as a mystery because there is nothing mysterious about it. Cerebral activity is nowhere apparent in the characters, nor is any mental capacity required of readers. What wit one finds in this book is pretty dim. There is nothing in The Hot Kid for fans of Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe but plenty for those who like Dirty Harry. One hopes, therefore, that The Hot Kid is not your typical, law-enforcement success story.

Moving quickly as it does from one shoot-out to another, The Hot Kid is hot stuff if you like that kind of stuff, but it's not so hot if you don't. ( )