Tishomingo Blues by Elmore Leonard
Everyone tells me to read Elmore Leonard. I never had. Good escapist crime fiction, is what everyone says. I read Tishomingo Blues, and it was o.k. It’s not intended to be literature, so I guess I have to judge it differently from other stories. It’s described as a masterpiece, as a great crime fiction novel, but I’m not sure why.
I’m guessing it’s more fun than most crime fiction, but since I really haven’t read much I really don’t have a benchmark. Leonard isn’t one of those procedural crime nerd writers, not by a long shot. He keeps the story moving and is very good at spare writing and keeping the story going. He’s good at quickly giving you a feel for a character and what motivates them. He creates broadstrokes of characters that make them just believable enough to give the reader what he needs to know where the character fits.
Tishomingo Blues isn’t a masterpiece in my eyes, but it was fun like a 1970’s funky noir movie. I don’t even know if that concept exists, but it’s the only tool I have to describe it. He’s a good writer, and he probably can crank one or two of these out a year and entertain the hell out of the faithful. I’m not convinced he’s a genius. But there’s one thing he might do better than almost anyone else: Make you laugh but keep the suspense hanging. And I thought I was really smart and thought I’d mapped out the plot outcome about half way through. I was right about the path taken by protagonist diver character (except for the last minute love interest Leonard threw in). In this story, Leonard made it easy for you to know who The Good Bad Guys are, and The Bad Bad Guys are. I was ready for the The Good Bad Guys to somehow win, but I wasn’t sure how that would happen. I knew that it would climax at this weird Civil War re-enactment evnet that he kept building up (GUNS! STUPID SOUTHERN CRIMINALS!! LIQUOR!!!). And I must admit, it was an entertaining ending, and a little surprising. But the Good Bad Guys didn’t really take any hard hits, except for the un-sophisticated old school mob neanderthal guy that Leonard made you dislike from the get-go. I guess in Elmore Leonard’s world, drug dealers that dress well from the north are better than in-bred drug dealers from the south.
Anyway, if you still think Pulp Fiction is a great movie, then you would probably like Tishomingo Blues. Leonard probably doesn’t deserve that, but he probably also doesn’t deserve to be called a genius either.
