Customer Reviews

Mr. Majestyk

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Mr. Majestyk, an interesting name for a vietnam vet turned Melon Picker. Actually, forget Mr. Majestyk was ever in Vietnam, it isn't that critical to the story. If you knew that Mr. Majestyk was a hunter, then his hard nose attitude would still make sense.

All of that however, is an aside. Mr. Majestyk tells the story of a man that has escaped the world of Vietnam and attempts to raise a melon crop. He hires migrant workers to bring his crop in, including the love interest of the story, Nancy. And as others have put it, the job must get done.

However, where there is a job, organized is usually not far behind in Leonard's novels. Even in the American Southwest. For Mr. Majestyk, it starts with a two bit hood named Bobby Kopas that tries to muscle in his own crew to pick the product in Majestyk's fields. With a punch and a shot gun, Majestyk drives them off and starts the whole ball rolling.

After getting arrested for assaulting Kopas, Majestyk gets involved with a prison break with a Mafia Hitman named Frank Renda. The rest of the novel centers around Renda's planned revenge against Majestyk.

I just found out this morning, after having completed the novel, that Mr. Majestyk was also a movie in 1974. I'm not certain which came first - the novel or the movie. However, Leonard wrote them both. The movie stars Charles Bronson, who I can see playing Mr. Majestyk, but I think someone like Clint Eastwood, or a larger actor would have matched my image from the novel better.

Again, I digress. I guess I'm not surprised this book is also a movie. Unlike Leonard's more recent novels, Mr. Majestyk is much more action oriented than dialogue driven. That is kind of disappointing because Leonard's dialogue is the best. However, his action in this novel is some of the crispest he has written. I kept thinking to myself that I was surprised this hadn't already been turned into a movie as so many of Leonard's other novels had been - the surprise was on me I guess.

This novel is also reminiscent of an old western. The hero (Majestyk) is pursued by the villain (Renda). The law fails, so the hero must take matters into his own hand, and ultimately, there will be a big showdown at high noon. Okay, so they don't meet in the middle of town with a pair of six shooters, but its close.

I'd recommend this novel to anyone that enjoys Leonard and is looking for something a little different from him. A lot of the internal dialogue for the characters is missing in this one, but it is a quick read that tells a good story for some unlikely heros.

Another in a long line of Elmore Leonard thrillers. Apparently this one started out as a Charles Bronson film, with the screenplay by Leonard. Story is Clint Eastwood turned down the role so it went to Bronson, dont know if they considered Sylvester Stallone or not.

Anyway, this is a short read, only 4.5 hours on the audio version. Majestyk is a tough Army Ranger who has retired to Arizona to grow melons. I never knew how dangerous that occupation is, but apparently is it fraught with big-time gangsters, small-time hoodlums, racists, and very pretty union organizers. Of course, our protagonist overcomes all this, and still gets the melons picked in time. The cops start out arresting Majestyk, then come to support him when they realize he personifies all that is good in our free enterprise system and is a lot tougher than they are.

As is typical in Leonard's books, we have great characters (unfortunately the bad guys kill one in a hit and run of a roadside porta-potty), lots of local color, insights into the inner workings (who knew you had to turn melons over by hand if not sufficiently ripe), tough guys, even tougher girls, wine-heads, and gritty dialogue. We even have a crime syndicate run by a corrupt lawyer, who has converted the mob into a limited partnership with an HR department to provide annual performance reviews, corporate housing and bimbos.

Everyone should take these Elmore books to the beach or listen to them in the car, always great fun, suitable for all ages.

Elmore Leonard is the king of crime fiction. We know this because the covers of all his paperbacks say so, and it's so. Nelson DeMille, Ed McBain, Joseph Wambaugh, and others all have their points, but no one has consistently produced the level of crime fiction that Leonard has over the course of five decades now.

"Mr. Majestyk" isn't part of that legacy. It's a sturdy, muscle-minded, no-frills crime story that 100 other guys could have churned out in the 1970s, and many did. The idea of a peaceable loner coming up against dark criminal forces, only to be revealed as more formidable than any of his adversaries banked on, was old then and older now. Characterization is limited. The atmosphere is arid as a sun-baked arroyo. Most surprisingly for Leonard, the dialogue is long on brawn and short on brains. "Shut up, %**$^@#" is about the best the normally loquacious Leonard seems able, or interested, in presenting.

A good review elsewhere on this page notes the book was actually written after the movie, which became a Charles Bronson vehicle after Clint Eastwood dropped out. You can kind of smell that star positioning behind the unpromising premise of a melon farmer who runs into trouble while hiring migrant workers in the American Southwest. Dirty Harry wanted to show he wasn't all about gunning down minorities, and apparently Chuck Bronson felt the same (though this movie came out just before "Death Wish" did during the same year, 1974).

The novel doesn't shed much light in the migrant worker situation, or try to. Nor does it offer much insight into the Vietnam vet, Majestyk's previous line of work. It spends its short span setting up Majestyk's unenviable situation. Getting busted by the cops for defending his work site against a small-time hoodlum, he winds up crossing a much nastier and more powerful criminal during an escape attempt. Can he dispense with this threat and get his melons to market so he doesn't lose his farm?

Though these sort of novels typically shortchange the police to provide the non-cop hero with more of a lone-wolf situation, "Mr. Majestyk" overamps this by making the fuzz Barney-Fife-caliber hopeless. For example, their case against chief villain Frank Renda goes up in smoke when a cop who collared Renda is gunned down during the escape fight. Didn't the officer write a report, or was he just going to testify at the trial from memory? Instead, the police seem to throw up their hands and rely on using Mr. Majestyk for bait (and then fail to keep adequate track of him.)

Lucky for law and order, the bad guys in this one are even dumber. Frank Renda, we are told, is a hard guy "cool, patient, like someone who moved slowly, without wasted effort." Well, that is until Renda gets it in his head to waste Majestyk. Then there's a lot of wasted effort. Renda just won't quit, even as it becomes obvious that his obsession for killing the melon farmer who gave him some static is going to cost him another trip to the big house, perhaps the good graces of his mob overlords, and a good half-dozen of his best foot soldiers. Renda's no psycho killer; he's actually diversified. We are told his other affairs include a restaurant linen service and a string of massage parlors. But a few minutes with Majestyk turns him into a kamikaze. For a cold-blooded trigger man, Renda runs a bit too hot to be believed.

Majestyk doesn't emote much, which makes him a perfect Charles Bronson hero. Actually, Bronson apparently gave the character more charm in the movie version (I haven't seen it), which makes you wonder whether Leonard underwrote the character deliberately after losing Eastwood's services to construct his protagonist around and being at a loss as to what to replace him with. There's an attempt at presenting a romance, but why bother when we don't know much about what draws Majestyk and his migrant worker friend together except he likes the way she looks in a pair of jeans and she likes the fact he's a fair labor contractor. [Cue violins.]

The final Wild West-style showdown borrows from many better stories, and wraps itself up too neatly in less than ten pages. Leonard obviously didn't waste more than a month punching this out, getting it in place as a film tie-in that would support him while he toiled over more ambitious fare. It's a decent story for a bus trip, but "Majestyk" in name only. Nearly any other Leonard is a better bet.

The more I read Elmore Leonard the more I appreciate movies made from his authentic, down-to-earth stories.

Every scene he depicts is shown through the eyes of someone each of us knows as a friend or an acquaintance instead of from some hifalutin artistic writer in love with words or his own voice.

Mr. Majestyk, the movie, is one of those rare movies that is both as good as the novel and stays true to the novel itself. Probably it stays true because Elmore Leonard writes in pictures instead of in five syllable words. Also, perhaps, because Mr. Leonard is a master story teller - C. William Anderson, aka Travis C. Ward.

There is more --- the book has bonus materials for your reading enjoyment and to ease your effort to complete your collection of Elmore Leonard titles.

I promise you this...Read one Elmore Leonard story and you'll bust a gut to get the next, and the next, and the next.

Elmore Leonard's 1974 pulp thriller owes much of its renown to a film treatment starring Charles Bronson. But as a freestanding novel, 'Mr. Majestyk' is a sturdy piece of craftsmanship and a benchmark for the genre. Just 216 pages long in the recent HarperTorch softcover edition, it is the engaging story of Vincent Majestyk, a former POW from the American tactical missions in Laos, who finds his Arizona melon-growing business under siege by local mob bosses.

'Mr. Majestyk' uses an intricate storyline, placing Vincent at odds with mob head Frank Renda, the police, and his loyal farmhand Nancy Chavez, with whom he falls in love despite a stoic attitude. The novel is mostly driven by Majestyk's intense self-respect and desire to live on his own terms. Leonard keeps a fairly good pace in advancing the story, providing balanced character insights and a limited but well-made helping of shootouts and car chases.

During lulls in the action, 'Majestyk' interestingly portrays migrant farm work that still employs thousands of Chicanos in the United States each year. Leonard's Arizona setting is a living, breathing one, allowing us to feel the dust, intense sunlight, and stillness. The lead players are given enough color and shape for readers to stay interested, although character development is typically lacking. Plot gaps and far-fetched situations (two chronic symptoms of thrillers) also have their place in 'Majestyk,' but the story is far too entertaining, at least in my opinion, for these weaknesses to jump off the page and spoil a reader's enjoyment.

'Majestyk' is recommended for thriller fans and available from HarperTorch in an October 2002 printing. A sneak preview of Leonard's 'Tishomingo Blues' is also provided after the novel's conclusion.

This brief little story started off as a screenplay commissioned by Clint Eastwood. However, when Eastwood decided to make the uberdark High Plains Drifter instead, Leonard's script got sold to someone else and was turned into a movie starring Charles Bronson in 1974. Leonard subsequently novelized the screenplay, which accounts for its relative brevity. The story is pretty basic and, upon reflection, typically ridiculous. The title character is an Vietnam special forces vet who just wants to lead a quiet life farming melons. An altercation with a small-time hood lands him in jail with a notorious hitman, and things get sillier from there, as the he struggles to get back to his melons and get them in on time. There's a subplot involving a relationship with a Latina union organizer who seems really smart and together, that is, until she goes along with his harebrained plans. As always, Leonard's prose passes the time, but only barely.

Mr. Majestyk by Elmore Leonard
Reviewed by Bobby Downs

Vincent Majestyk was a soldier in Vietnam. Now he is a poor Arizona farmer just trying to make a living growing watermelons, but when it comes time to pick the watermelons a man Vincent doesn't know has people in his field picking melons. This guy wants Vincent to pay him, like he's the mafia. The guy won't leave and threatens to shoot Vincent, but Vincent takes his shot gun away and kicks his ass. Then the mafia want-to-be guy calls the cops and Vincent gets thrown in jail for a felony assault. Vincent knows he will lose his farm if he doesn't get the watermelons picked soon, but now he's in jail and this is just the beginning of his trouble. In jail Vincent meets a real bad mafia hit man. They are on a bus together, and Vincent tries, but isn't able to stop the hit man from escaping. After that instead of taking off far away the hit man is obsessed with killing Vincent. The only thing is, Vincent has the Vietnam experience, and he's a hunter who knows the land--unlike the hit man. He might not be Rambo or anything, but Vincent has a pickup truck and a rifle and he doesn't plan on sitting around and making it easy for the hit man to come and kill him. This is a pretty good book.

When Elmore Leonard published Mr. Majestyk in 1974, mass success was just around the corner. But Leonard hadn't made his name and he was still polishing his style. Mr. Majestyk contains many of Leonard's trademarks - tough guys, beautiful women, great dialogue, and vivid atmosphere. Still, it is a cut below Leonard's very best.

Mr. Majestyk is a very short novel and the plot is basic. Vincent Majestyk is a Vietnam Vet and a convicted felon who wants to escape his past by growing melons in Arizona. Of course, it doesn't quite work out that way as people try to muscle in on his business.

Leonard fans will notice many similarities in Mr. Majestyk and Leonard's later work. Mr. Majestyk evokes the "feel" of the Arizona desert. It also has the usual assortment of great Leonard rough characters who help create the gritty atmosphere. Consider this description:

"The gas station attendant said to himself, ---- Get up at five in the morning to sell three bucks' worth. Wait around all day and watch the tourists drive by. Four-thirty sell the migrants a buck's worth. ----"

Leonard's novels seem simple, but he introduces some complex elements. For instance, at the end of Mr. Majestyk he uses "cross cuts" - in which he describes a sequence of events, but uses multiple narrators to tell the story. The reader has no trouble following what is happening - which is a tribute to Leonard's skill.

This novel differs from Leonard's later work. The plot has more action, and less snappy dialogue. Also, Leonard's characters aren't as "hip" and they don't behave absurdly - which are weaknesses in some of his novels.

Mr. Majestyk isn't Leonard's best novel. But it's great fun and easy reading - a perfect beach book.

Written in 1974 and then re-released in a new 2002 edition, Mr. Majestyk
is an average crime, revenge, Western action novel. In 1981 First Blood, the original Rambo novel by David Morrell appeared, and the two books have
some similarities: The protagonist was in Viet Nam, learned to kill skillfully and silently in the jungle; upon return to a sparsely populated
area, he wanted to live alone; when hasselled by the police, his steely
nature appeared; both characters spend the rest of the novel seeking to
avenge wrongful treatment. Maybe this is true of many novels during the post-war period, but the parallels were interesting.
As for style, it's lean prose with fairly ordinary dialogue. Overall,
not a word wasted.

From the prolific pen of legendary crime writer Elmore Leonard, Mr. Majestyk is a short, straightforward action adventure novel with a touch of romance. Vince Majestyk is an Arizona melon grower who rather unwisely incurs the wrath of a professional killer. It's a story of cat and mouse that rapidly changes to one of cat and cat.
This is a solidly written novel, which I'd have to characterize as a lesser work of the Leonard canon. The dialogue, as we've come to expect from Leonard, rings very true. Quirky characters and off the wall situations, staples of the author's best fiction, do not play much of a role here.
Mr. Majestyk is an easy, enjoyable read. But it is not the unique brand of writing that accounts for Elmore Leonard's stellar reputation.