City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit [Paperback]

Elmore Leonard (Author)

Book Description

Series: Elmore Leonard Library | Publication Date: July 1999

Ride down Woodward Avenue into the Motor City, toward a deadly show-down between dedicated homicide detective Raymond Cruz and a psychopathic murderer, "Oklahoma Wildman" Clement Mansell, who picked the wrong town to kill someone, even if it was only a crooked judge.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Elmore Leonard has written more than three dozen books including Cuba Libre, Rum Punch, and Get Shorty, and numerous screenplays. He has an unparalleled reputation among lovers of mayhem, suspense, and just plain wonderful writing. A Grand Master Award winner of the Mystery Writers of America, he has been likened to everyone from Balzac to Dostoevsky to Dickens to Dashiell Hammett -- but he is, in fact, entirely and entertainingly sui generis.

He lives in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Perennial (HarperCollins) (July 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688169708
• ISBN-13: 978-0688169701
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #952,080 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Elmore Leonard has written more than forty novels, including bestsellers Up in Honey's Room, The Hot Kid, Mr. Paradise, Tishomingo Blues, Pagan Babies, and Glitz. Many of his books have been made into movies, including Get Shorty and Out of Sight. He lives with his wife, Christine, in Bloomfield Village, Michigan.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not up to what you would expect from a Leonard classic, September 16, 2006

By 

clifford "akitonmyers" (Portland, OR, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit (Mass Market Paperback)

This is one of those Elmore Leonard books that you just wont find in a bookstore. City Primeval has the characters you expect from a Leonard book, it has the banter, it has the tounge in cheek humor, and it has the plot that Leonard used to such a degree of sucess later on. But in the end, this book just does not meld together in the way that Leonard later perfected. The characters, the bad guys are just a little too stupid and evil here. The whole story relies so heavily upon them, that it falls apart due to Leonards not having yet found his magic that pops up in later books like Get Shorty.

This book was written almost three decades ago and is dated. I think that this might have been released right before Leonard went on a tear and churned out a good ten classics that are not only hillarious, but influenced a generation of writers like Carl Hiasson and Kinky Friedman. Leonard started out writing westerns and crime novels mostly set in Detroit where this book is set. Later he moved all of the action to Florida, and these are where the best of his works are set.

The book starts out with Clement Mansell, a ruthless punk, gunning down a judge every one hates and a young whore the judge was out with. From here it becomes a conflict between Mansell and a hard nosed cop Detective Raymond Cruz.

This book isn't all bad, and is worth reading if you have read most of Leonards more recent work and are wanting to take on everything the author has written. But I would suggest that you not start with this book. Try Get Shorty, or one of his from around 1990-95, and I would say that you will be much happier.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good stuff!, August 30, 2010

By 

Anthony Bruno (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit (Mass Market Paperback)

This is one of Leonard's early crime novels when he made the transition from westerns, and though the setting is contemporary, in many ways CITY PRIMEVAL feels like a western, and that's a good thing. Law man vs. bad man in gritty urban Detroit-- a simpler structure than his later books that featured motley crews of bad guys. The dialogue is right on the money, the plot suspenseful. It has everything you could ask for in a good crime book. Compared to a lot of the dreck that passes for crime fiction these days, it's a gem.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars High Noon in Detroit, The Hunted and The Switch, November 16, 2008

By 

Sarason D. Liebler (Liberty, Maine USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit (Mass Market Paperback)

I have never been disappointed with Elmore Leonard and though some books are better than others they are all fives. If one has read any of Leonard's older Westerns you can,in these three books, his morphing over to modern day crime from early westerns, that directly links the good and evil of crime, and the consistancy of psychopaths, past and present.

Good guy, bad guy, threatened heroine and a plot, that's it.

Leonard always creates an original and believable plot. His books are not mystery's they are the development of characters, portrayed in pitch perfect dialogue, that come together in believable random ways. You know roughly how they will end, good wins and bad loses, but the trip, with meandering and fascinating building block incidents, are a pleasure.

The psychological depth that he gives his characters always ring true.