The Elmore Leonard Value Collection: Pronto, Riding the Rap, and Get Shorty

by Elmore Leonard, Joe Mantegna (Reader)

Six cassettes, 9 hrs.
performances by Joe Mantegna

Pronto— For 20 years Harry Arno has operated a sports book in Miami Beach, taking bets on all the pro games. And for 20 years Harry has been skimming off the top of the profits, short-changing his silent partners, the local wiseguys. Harry is ready to retire to a villa on the Italian Riviera with his girlfriend Joyce, when he becomes the fall guy in an FBI assault on organized crime and ends up running for his life.

Get Shorty— In a novel filled with his signatures—nerve shattering suspense, crackling dialogue, scathing wit—Elmore Leonard proves once again why he sets the standard against which all other crime novels are measured.

In GET SHORTY , he takes a mobster to Hollywood, where the women are gorgeous, the men are corrupt, and making it big isn't all that different from making your You gotta know who to pitch, who to hit, and how to knock'em dead.

Riding the Rap— It seemed like a brilliant idea. Three mismatched bad guys—a Palm Beach pothead, a Bahamian ex-con, and a Puerto Rican gardener turned mob enforcer—get together to carry out the perfect kidnap retired Miami bookie Harry Arno and let him pay the ransom with his ill-gotten wealth. He can't go to the cops later. No one will miss him. It's perfect. Or so they figure.

They figure wrong. Harry's former girlfriend, ex-topless dancer Joyce Patton, misses him a lot. Now she's sending her current boyfriend, Stetson-hatted federal marshal Raylan Givens, looking for Harry. And Raylan always gets his man. And in this case, he also gets his woman—the last person to see Harry, a sexy psychic named Dawn. Dawn may be clairvoyant, or she may be in on the kidnapping. Either way, she gives Raylan a lead, and he's hunting on Florida's 24-karat Gold Coast for three loco hombres…and trying to bring Harry back alive…

Audio Cassette

First published November 7, 2000

About the author

Elmore John Leonard lived in Dallas, Oklahoma City and Memphis before settling in Detroit in 1935. After serving in the navy, he studied English literature at the University of Detroit where he entered a short story competition. His earliest published novels in the 1950s were westerns, but Leonard went on to specialize in crime fiction and suspense thrillers, many of which have been adapted into motion pictures.

Father of Peter Leonard.

Reviews

[Rina Sakurai · Rating 4 out of 5]

GET SHORTY
published by PENGUIN READERS
written by Elmore Leonard
Level 3


time-90min.

7words-Miami/gangster/movie/accident/tragety/dangegous/gun

Discussion Question
1-Q,Have you ever taken participate in a big project like making a movie?
1-A,Yes. I have worked on womens' marathon as a volunteer while I was in highschool. I served water or bananas to runners.

2-Q, What do you think of GUN?
2-A, Not only I but also all think it is not good.
I heard that 80 people died of shoot by gun everyday in America.I feel so sad...

Favorite Scene
1-"A guy in black. Dark hair, dark eyes."
This sentence makes me imagin a film title "Man in black"

2-"The room was quiet."
This phrase was spoken in the studio for band practice. I also do band activity. We can feel silence more sensitively in a music studio than in other place, because we keep listening to in a loud volume. It was easy to guess and imagine!

[Evan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Get Shorty is a terrific. If you like Elmore Leonard's writing, this book has all the reasons why: great dialogue and characters, enough bad behavior to be interesting and tight plots. It's a fun read, better than the movie (which was very good in its own right), and a lovely way to spend time with some people you definitely don't meet every day.

[Claire · Rating 5 out of 5]

I couldn't find the book "Get Shorty" anywhere, which was totally inexplicable to me. Really? Amazon.com doesn't have it? Isn't it like one of his most famous books? Anyway, it's awesome. So sharp, so suspenseful, so funny. Chili Palmer is a fabulous character. I totally recommend it.

[Dave]

Excellent read. Better than the movie as are most books.