Out of Sight

It is already amazing to think that this thriller is nearly fifteen years old. There's not much to say about it other than it is expertly plotted, finely written and crisp. Leonard has a remarkable ability to evoke place and real human interaction.

The question with this sort of book is why we should be interested in dim-witted sociopaths with attention deficit disorder - 'misfits trying not to sound like losers' as the book puts it near the end.

The answer is, of course, that we shouldn't particularly - the persons are always less interesting than the plot. Leonard only makes them interesting by attempting to have the not-so-bad dimwits with some marginal sense of honour live the American myth, referencing their lives back to a simple show more Hollywood ethic.

On this score, 'Out of Sight' nearly did not get its five stars because of the completely romantic and absurd relationship between the hero, Jack Foley, an aging bank robber who does not want to do the time for his crimes, and a somewhat stereotyped daddy's girl female Federal Marshal. The central scene in this relationship is just the fantasy of a late middle aged male and little more than that, even if it evokes that fantasy with consummate skill.

But I relented on the basis that the ridiculousness of it only requires the same suspension of disbelief that any 'classic' Hollywood romantic crime movie might require.

The referencing of the legend of Dillinger and to 'Bonnie & Clyde' and other genre films shows a certain sad knowingness about the role of the outlaw myth in American individualism that points up all the better to the reader the harsh reality of blundering third rate minds trying to grab what they can within a chaotic system.

A lot of male readers will part-identify with Jack Foley (and is that not a quintessential masculine outlaw name!?) as those who compromised with that system for the sake of security. The outcome is a nice little morality tale for the Middle American male - you made the right choice in the end even if you never got to feel as alive as Jack must have done when he was younger.

Whatever the use made of thrillers like these by Hollywood, their cultural role is a fundamentally conservative one, albeit with a nod to the radical freedom that is just around the corner and for which most men pine so long as there are no costs or consequences.

It took time to appreciate Elmore Leonard's genius in this book as the plot was being set up but by the end there was no doubt of it. show less

Jack Foley is a career bank robber. Karen Sisco is a US Marshal. They meet at gunpoint, while Foley is breaking out of a Florida prison and Karen is arriving to process the complaint of an inmate. Inconvenient for both of them. Foley forces Karen into the trunk of her car and then climbs in with her (his buddy, Buddy, drives the getaway vehicle). In inimitable Elmore Leonard fashion, a romance is born. Sort of.

It appears Leonard is going to become my guilty pleasure. Guilty because I'm not that great at suspending disbelief, typically. The attraction/romance/whatever thread here is more than a shade ridiculous, and most of the secondary characters are larger than life. Really, Karen herself is larger than life, looking sexy in a tight show more skirt and heels while racking a shotgun and striding with confidence after the jail-breakers.

Yeah, I should have been rolling my eyes. Instead, I was having a great time. Leonard does that: spins this story (and all his stories, if the collection FIRE IN THE HOLE is any indication) with such effortless confidence, I don't dare pause to question the realism. The pacing is breathless. The stakes are high. The bad guys aren't so overwritten that they can't be disturbing. Karen and Foley are, if not sympathetic, always interesting. The prose is a stripped skeleton, but this story could only work in Leonard's voice. And then there's the dialogue, which is delightful genius--barbed and cool and tough, yet indirect and realistic.

It's a punchy, violent, grim caper in which you can anticipate the conclusion but certainly not how the author will get you there. It's understated in a great way. It's absurd in places and raw in places and comically true in places. And the best part--it knows exactly what it is and embraces all of that. show less

3.5/5
Jack Foley, a career bank robber, escapes from federal prison and falls back into the same routines that got him there. Karen Sisco, a federal marshal that gets mixed up in his escape attempt, develops an obsession for catching him. The path of these two characters provide a simple framework in which many other side characters and exciting sequences take place.

This was my first book by Elmore Leonard, and I was pleasantly surprised by what I found. What struck me the most of the style of writing, and the dialogue. Everything was cut down to it's most bare essentials, nothing left that wasn't absolutely necessary. It spoke to me at least, though I could understand not jiving with it. It's a pretty unique voice. The dialogue was also show more excellent, written in a way that people actually speak in. I could hear the conversations in my head clearly.

The pacing moved right along, following the lead of the writing style. Interesting events were frequent and well received. Leonard even gets the tiniest bit philosophical, exploring the concept of destiny, as Jack comes to terms with his life decisions, feeling stuck and helpless to change them in the slightest. There's also some interesting points to be made about the degrees of 'evil', how criminals are judged across the board as bad, regardless of the severity of their crime.

Out of Sight is, in my estimation, a really highly elevated form of pulp. It was easy reading, enjoyable, and exciting. It didn't move me, not that every book you read does, or even wants to. I was disappointed slightly in the abrupt ending, even though it made perfect sense in the context of the rest of the book. Out of Sight accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do, no more, no less, much like the writing itself. It's a summer beach read in it's highest form. show less

The Basics

Jack Foley is in the middle of a prison escape and accidentally kidnaps a beautiful US Marshall by the name of Karen Sisco. As he goes on the run, the result is their paths cross and part over and over again, sparks flying all the while.

My Thoughts

I don’t really have clear thoughts on this one. I was left feeling very neutral, and whenever I try to think of what to say, it all comes out negative. I went into this because Leonard is known for writing crime fiction with notoriously good dialogue, and I got a romance. Normally that wouldn’t bother me too much, but it was a very problematic romance that tried to incorporate the grit of a crime-driven novel while leaving me feeling unconvinced these people should even be show more talking to each other.

For instance, Karen is made to look pretty unprofessional and a really poor judge of character for someone who made it all the way to US Marshall. Jack’s insistent advances make him seem like a date rapist, especially early on when they’re trapped in a trunk together. Nothing about that screamed “romance” to me, rather the opposite, but the book insists that this makes them… something. Compatible? Soul mates? Potential lovers? Not to me.

So then I tried to tell myself this world doesn’t apply to my world. It’s some alternate universe where being kidnapped by a scuzzy con on the run is hot. I still couldn’t do it. Karen was consistently narrowed down to how good her legs and hair looked, and I couldn’t get the image of him trapped with her in a trunk out of my head, and I just couldn’t do it. This book lost me from the beginning, and I kept trying to get back on its wavelength, and it never happened.

Aside from the romance, there were some good points here. I like the crime in crime fiction, and it is here. It was just overrun by an unbelievable relationship that Leonard so wanted me to believe in.

While I think I would like to pursue other authors in the genre, Leonard’s writing was so sparse that I couldn’t sink into it. This is not Hemingway or McCarthy sparse. It’s to the point of having no rhythm, nothing to hold onto. Not every book needs to be a purple mess, but I wanted something here that I didn’t receive.

Final Rating

2/5 show less

Whether or not you will enjoy this book largely depends on how you feel about minimalist writing. That is, writing with a bare minimum level of detail or explanation. Elmore Leonard is an expert in the form. Unfortunately, it just doesn't appeal to me much. There were many parts where I longed for a fair bit more than I was given, and leaps in events that make little or no logical sense in light of the story provided. Even when things seem to go the way that they logically feel as though they should, the explanations and reasoning provided felt off. It was certainly not a bad book, by any means, but is definitely one that involves a very particular writing style that will only truly appeal to a particular audience. I just wasn't able to show more suspend my disbelief quite enough for it to really work for me. Oddly enough, I did like some of the characters and events quite a lot, given the minimalist style. So, it clearly wasn't something I could say I disliked. show less

Bank robber Jack Foley didn't plan to take U.S. Marshal Karen Sisco hostage when he escaped from prison, it just sort of happened. It's one of those in the wrong place at the wrong time scenarios. And as so often happens when two people spend any quality time together in the cramped trunk of a car, especially if one has just spent part of the evening crawling through a tunnel carved out of the odiferous Everglades muck and the other is hiding a Sig Sauer between her thighs, love and attraction quickly blossoms. And they say romance is dead.

What follows is typical Elmore Leonard, which is to say amazing: snappy dialogue, complex characters, and a fast moving narrative. Leonard books aren't traditional crime/mystery novels. Sure, there's show more usually a crime and unsavory characters abound, but that's not the point of his books. Leonard's novels are character studies. He examines the lives of the not-so-bad-guys while simultaneously acknowledging that there is plenty of badass evil in the world. Take Jack for example. Leonard doesn't sugarcoat the fact that Jack is a criminal. He robs banks, he's good at what he does, and it's the only life he's ever known. He's no Robin Hood; his only interest is self-preservation and making easy money. He knows it's too late to go straight and try to live a normal life. However, does this automatically negate the fact that, in terms of personality, Jack is just a damn likable guy? No. And that's what draws Karen to him, despite her instincts. These two aren't idiots: they know there's no happy ending for them. There's a moment that they can choose to take advantage of or not. And does any of this negate the fact that Jack has gotten himself mixed up with some truly bad people? Nope.

This is one of those cases of "wish I had read the book before I saw the movie." I really hate it when this happens because I can't help but picture the actors as the characters, which robs me of the opportunity to "see" them for myself (which was particularly jarring in the case of Karen Sisco who, in the book, is slim, willowy, and blonde--in other words, the physical opposite of Jennifer Lopez, though Lopez was good in the role).

And in a continuation of Why I Hate the Kindle: I was sitting in Bass Pro Shop (not my favorite place in the world, but heaven on earth to my husband) in St. Louis and reading this book. A very nice lady sat down on the bench next to me and asked if I had seen the FX show Justified, which led to a very serious and intellectual literary conversation (okay, so maybe it was just about how hot Timothy Olyphant is in that role and what Leonard books the series is based on). My point being: would she have approached me if I had been sitting with my non-descript Kindle? Maybe, but maybe not. show less

Before Elmore Leonard passed away last year (2013), he left us with some forty-nine novels and a number of screenplays. Beginning with 1953’s The Bounty Hunters, Leonard wrote westerns and crime novels and was unique for his realistic dialogue. Many of his books were made into feature-length movies, including Hombre, The Big Bounce, The Moonshine War, Mr. Majestyk, Killshot, Get Shorty, and Jackie Brown. Three of his novels spawned televisions series: Justified (from Pronto), Maximum Bob, and Karen Sisco (from Out of Sight). Out of Sight, of course, made the big screen in 1998 featuring George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez.

This is a book that you will want to set aside a day to read and not have much else on your agenda except perhaps show more eating and other necessary things. It is that good. The plot is fairly simple. Jack Foley has committed something like two hundred bank robberies. He has done time in two federal penitentiaries, the latest being a Florida facility. He is not about to finish his dying day in prison so when he hears about some other inmates about to break out, he piggybacks on their escape, meaning that when they are in the tunnel to freedom, Foley follows and, as the guards shoot after the gang escaping, Foley has his own ride waiting for him. Federal Marshal Karen Sisco is there getting ready to interview a convict, but gets swept up in the escape and ends up in a car trunk with Foley, too tightly squeezed in to get her weapon out. With his hand creeping up her thighs, they make small talk about Bonnie and Clyde, Faye Dunaway, and other movies. Foley wonders if things would have been different between them if they had met in a bar and he wasn’t who he is and she wasn’t who she is. And, he finds it real hard to concentrate on escaping as she climbs up a hill in front of him in her short, tight skirt. Foley makes good his escape and Sisco is out to find him, possibly to bring him to justice, possibly to have a drink with him.

The action ranges from the Florida swamps to the cold wintery streets of Detroit where Foley and his aptly named buddy, “Buddy,” make an alliance with hardened street thugs and Sisco shows up, still determined to find Foley and company. The tension in the book exists between the confident gentleman bank robber and the street toughs and between whether Sisco will take Foley in when she finds him or run off to a tropical island with him.

The greatness of this book (and it is a great book) is in the witty dialogue between Foley and the other escapees and, most particularly, between Foley and Sisco, with sparks flying between them every time they cross paths. It is an unlikely story, but Leonard pulls it off. He has created here some terrific characters, fleshed out in their dialogue and actions. show less