Elmore Leonard's Bandits (G.K. Hall Large Print Book Series) [LARGE PRINT] (Paperback)

by Elmore Leonard (Author) "EVERY TIME THEY GOT A CALL from the leper hospital to pick up a body Jack Delaney would feel himself coming down with the flu..." (more)
Key Phrases: bank sacks, prep room, sun parlor, Wally Scales, Franklin de Dios, Sister Lucy (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"All the suspense, tough talk, and local color anyone can expect... "Bandits" should fill the land with the sound of turning pages!" -- "Time"

"May well be his best." --"The Philadelphia Inquirer"

"You'll find the usual deft Leonard touches -- the dialogue that sounds like it was copied off the police blotter, the instructive fascination with minor details, the twists and turns and sudden, nasty violence that somehow seems casual.... You won't be able to avoid it, nor should you." --"St. Louis Post-Dispatch"

"Leonard delivers. "Bandits" is...the best thing he's done.... The language reeks of the street -- and the convent. The words fit the characters. And the characters are stunning."" --Houston Chronicle"

""Bandit" crackles like a brown paper bag pulled up around a half pint." --"Atlanta Constitution"

"Almost unbearable suspense. Leonard has produced another winner." --"People"

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Description

Working at his brother-in-law's New Orleans funeral home isn't reformed jewel thief Jack Delaney's idea of excitement -- until he's dispatched to a leper's hospital to pick up a corpse that turns out to be very much alive ... and under the care of a beautiful, radical ex-nun in designer jeans. The "deceased" is the one-time squeeze of a Nicaraguan colonel who's ordered her dead for trying to "infect" him, and Sister Lucy's looking to spirit the young woman away from his guns and goons. Plus Lucy's getting ideas about spiriting away some of the colonel's millions as well -- and someone with Jack Delaney's talents could come in very handy indeed.

--This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: G K Hall & Co; Largeprint edition (November 1987)
• ISBN-10: 081614298X
• ISBN-13: 978-0816142989
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,619,392 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars From the Leonard Reviews: Strange and derivative, March 27, 2001

By	Samuel Louis "raisindot" (Natick, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bandits (Paperback)

Elmore Leonard gets religion (and philosophy) in "Bandits," one of his least satisfying works. He recycles his classic character types: Jack Delaney, the cool, collected ex-con having a hard time adjusting to civilian life; Sister Lucy, the good girl/bad girl who claims to be a nun but isn't above criminal intent, and a Nicaraguan heavy who is pretty much a carbon copy of the Dominican heavy from "Cat Chaser." Through a slug-paced story that lacks the usual Leonard crackle, we get ample doses of Catholic philosophy, superficial New Orleans 'atmosphere,' a "will they or won't they" tease that ends up being boring after awhile, until the usual Leonard fireworks end the tale. If you are going through the Leonard canon, I recommend leaving "Bandits" at the bottom of your "to-read" list.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Crime Fiction With A Twist, April 14, 2002

By	Karlos Marxus (Florida) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bandits (Paperback)

Let's not beat around the bush: Bandits is flawed. But flawed in the same way that the Mona Lisa's smile is somehow not quite right, not quite natural. OK, let me back off a little. I'm not going to tell you that Bandits is high art, but it's quirky. In a good way.

It's quirky because Elmore Leonard is stretching the boundaries of crime fiction here. All the Elmore Leonard basics are there - the girl, the ex-con, the heist, and that absolutely authentic dialog that perhaps more than anything else is Leonard's trademark. But underneath the skin Bandits is a psychological novel masquerading as a political statement masquerading as plot driven crime fiction. Or maybe more the mixed race love child of the three. Whatever it is, it's vintage Elmore Leonard, with a twist.

The ex-con is Jack Delaney, former jewel thief, currently embarked on a new career as a funeral home assistant with his brother in law, at the persuasion of the parole system of the state of Louisiana. After three years Delaney's just not finding a whole lot of fulfillment in his new profession, and when he crosses paths with hot babe and former Sister of the order of Saint Francis of the Stigmata Lucy Nichols on a trip to pick up a body from the nearby church hospital, he starts getting antsy.

The novel is set in the late 80's, during the period of the conflict between the Sandinista government and the contras, and Lucy's just back from a ten year stint ministering to the needs of lepers in a Nicaraguan hospital. She's not a nun anymore, but she doesn't know what she is instead yet.

Part of her identity crisis evolves out of a little reality therapy administered to her while she was in country by contra Colonel Dagoberto Godovy, or Bertie as he likes to be called, who's in the US raising money from wealthy Republicans to fund the contras. It turns out that besides being an stereotypical short guy with a temper and an attitude problem, Bertie has a few other unreedeming social qualities, like a tendency to act out by chopping up lepers and pregnant women with a machete.

The action revolves around Lucy and Jack's efforts to relieve the colonel of the warchest he's collected, and put it to better use than killing, maiming, and torturing innocent civilians so that they can be free of the scourge of communism. In the process they lead each other to unexpected discoveries about who and what they really are.

There are a few weaknesses. The plot jerks around sometimes like a squirrel trying to get across the road, but it's always engaging. Leonard is also a little fanatical about dialog, so much so that he sometimes transitions between chapters with it in what stands out as being unwieldy amidst otherwise fairly seamless prose.

And finally there's the ending. I won't go into details except to say that resolving one character's crisis at the end to my mind violated an honor that should have bound thieves.

But as always Leonard delivers on solid entertainment, and the novel's other elements integrate it and give it a deeper authenticity.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars bandits not his best but good, February 27, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Bandits (Paperback)

The formula for an Leonard thriller has a powerful jerk or jerks using a couple of oddball crooks to perpetrate a scam. A middle-aged semi-retired proffesional gets caught up in the scam and sleeps with a woman who's also caught up in the scam. It's the voices of the characters that keeps you reading more than the plot-twists, but his characterization is usually dead-on and sympathetic to all sides. This one keeps the pot boiling but isn't up htere with LaBrava,Freaky Deaky, 52 Pick-up etc.,etc.