Road Dogs: A Novel [Hardcover]

Elmore Leonard (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 12, 2009

Jack Foley and Cundo Rey are road dogs: trusted jailhouse comrades watching each other's back. They're so tight, Cundo's using his own money and his shark lady lawyer to get Foley's sentence reduced from thirty years to three months. And when Jack gets out, the wealthy Cuban criminal wants him to stay in Cundo's multimillion dollar Venice Beach house—right across from the one where Cundo's common-law wife, professional psychic Dawn Navarro, resides. There will certainly be some payback expected, though Jack can't figure out what. Sexy Dawn's intentions are a lot clearer. But Cundo's coming home earlier than anticipated, and Jack smells a double-cross cooking—the kind that could turn a road dog into road kill.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best of the Month, May 2009: Be Cool. If Elmore Leonard hadn't already used it for the sequel to Get Shorty, it would have been a natural title for this deliciously breezy follow-up to another Leonard-to-Hollywood hit, Out of Sight. You may best recall Jack Foley, as played by George Clooney, bantering with Jennifer Lopez in the trunk of a jailbreak getaway car, but when Out of Sight ended, Foley was headed back to the clink to finish a 30-year bid. Road Dogs opens with Foley on the van to prison with Cundo Rey, a pint-size Cuban who soon engineers their early release--legally, this time. Jack's happy to be out and enjoying the California hospitality of Cundo and his wife Dawn (both Leonard veterans too, from LaBrava and Riding the Rap). But Dawn is lovely and wily (and maybe a psychic), Cundo is a murderously jealous husband who may well think Jack owes him big-time, and Jack? Well, when you've robbed a hundred-twenty or so banks, is it that easy to go straight? As so often with Leonard, the real fun is less in the action than the talk, especially from Foley, the pleasure-minded, level-headed hood: an ex-con whose biggest con may be that he is exactly who he says he is. --Tom Nissley

Questions for Elmore Leonard

Q:Where did the inspiration for the title Road Dogs come from?

A: Road Dogs was on a list of prison expressions my researcher Gregg Sutter got for me: inmates who watch each other’s back. I liked the sound of the words together.

Q: What made you decide to bring back Jack Foley, Cundo Rey, and Dawn Navarro now? What is it about these three characters that stuck with you through the years?

A: Foley was played by George Clooney in Out of Sight. I imagined George in the scenes I wrote and it worked. Dawn Navarro was the psychic in Riding the Rap, a supporting character ready for a leading role. Cundo Rey from LaBrava, another favorite of mine, also deserved a bigger role, so I brought him back..

Q: Any chance Foley and the woman he loves, Federal Marshal Karen Sisco, will be back in the near future?

A: I’m not sure Foley is up to robbing another bank. But Karen Sisco, the federal marshal in Out of Sight, could show up again; maybe working for her dad, a private investigator.

Q: One of the hallmarks of your writing is your gift for the telling detail. When Foley is offering Cundo Rey’s money man, Jimmy, some advice about his skimming, he tells him that Cundo won’t kill him, but he might “break your legs with a José Canseco bat.” That’s one of those small yet wonderfully deft touches that adds color without slowing the pace. How do you do this so well?

A: Realism is the key to my style of writing and dialogue is what keeps it moving, always in live scenes. Rather than use my voice, my language, to describe what’s going on, I let the characters tell who they are and what they’re up to by the way they talk. Scenes are written from a character’s point of view, never mine.

Q: Many of your characters are working class stiffs and tough, intelligent broads. What draws you to these kind of characters? What do you think accounts for their popularity?

A: My women often upstage the guys; they’re natural, their own person, while my cops and criminals talk the way I’ve observed them through research and being on the scene.

Q: What’s next for Elmore Leonard?

A: Next comes Djibouti, with Dara Barr, a documentary filmmaker with the Somali pirates off the coast of East Africa.

From Publishers Weekly

Leonard launches three characters from previous novels on a collision course in this seemingly effortless performance. After prison buddy Cundo Rey (last seen in LaBrava) drops a bundle on a shark attorney, celebrity bank robber Jack Foley (from Out of Sight) gets his 30-year prison sentence reduced to 30 months. Jack's quickly back in the world, living large in one of Cundo's two multimillion-dollar houses in Venice, Calif., juggling a fast seduction with fortune-teller (from Riding the Rap) Dawn Navarro (who is now Cundo's lady) and the untoward attention of rogue FBI agent Lou Adams, who's waiting for Foley to rob another bank. While Dawn tries to enlist Foley in a scheme to steal Cundo's off-the-books fortune, Cundo surprises them with an early release. Betrayal simmers while Foley considers going semi-straight—with the help of a widowed starlet—Dawn hatches a plan that could get her rich and rid her of all her problems, and Cundo's associates and neighborhood toughs get sucked into the fray. The plot isn't as tight as it could be, but Leonard's singular way with words is reason enough to read it. (May)
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 262 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow; 1 edition (May 12, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061733148
• ISBN-13: 978-0061733147
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (105 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #217,442 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

53 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Count Me a Fan, April 27, 2009

By 

Christy Tillery French "reviewer/writer" (Powell, TN) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Road Dogs: A Novel (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

Elmore Leonard brings back three characters from previous books for an encore performance in his latest comedic foray into the criminal world. Bank robber Jack Foley (Out of Sight), and Cundo Rey (LaBrava), meet in prison and quickly become friends, referring to themselves as Road Dogs. Rey's lawyer has arranged for his early release from prison and Rey offers her services to Foley, who's in for thirty years. She manages to get Foley's prison term reduced to 30 months and Foley is released two weeks before Rey. Rey offers Foley one of his houses in Venice Beach but admonishes him to keep his hands off his girlfriend, Dawn (Riding the Rap), a psychic/ghost hunter patiently waiting for Rey's release so she can con him out of his millions. When she meets Foley, Dawn knows he is her way to the money and tries to work her magic on him. Foley is intrigued but distracted by an FBI agent tailing him, waiting to capture him after he robs his next bank.

As usual, Leonard adroitly moves the story forward through realistic, at times quirky, dialogue and the inner thoughts of some pretty wacky people. He excels at delivering entertaining scenes of duplicity and complicity among characters on the wrong and right side of the law. Foley takes the lead in this comedy and is a cool guy who manages to stay one step ahead of those who have no qualms about taking him out, legally or illegally. The interplay between Foley and the others will keep the readers turning pages, laughing along the way. This is one fun read.

35 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Streetwise Banter Undercut By Lazy Plotting, May 9, 2009

By 

Kevin Joseph (McLean, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Road Dogs: A Novel (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

Jack Foley and Cundo Rey, the titular "road dogs," form a bond in prison that ties their fates after release. Enter Dawn Navarro, a psychic grifter who has acted the part of Cundo's dutiful wife during his eight-year prison sentence, patiently biding her time for the opportunity to steal his sizable fortune from him. When Foley is released from prison before Cundo, and becomes Dawn's lover and would-be accomplice, the stage is set for a triangular struggle that pits the road dogs' buddy-bond against their feelings for Dawn and against Dawn's own ambitions. A subplot involving Lou Adams, an FBI agent who is stalking Foley in the hope of catching him in a bank robbery so that he can find a compelling ending to a book he's writing about America's most accomplished bank robber, adds another entertaining dimension.

As is typical of an Elmore Leonard work, its main strength lies in the hip, streetwise banter between this trio of hustlers and in the conflict between their loyalties to one another and their rising distrust. The plot, unfortunately, suffers from one major flaw, which becomes harder and harder to overlook as the story unfolds: why does Dawn have to wait until Cundo is released from prison before conspiring with Cundo's money man Little Jimmy to embezzle Cundo's millions? The ending is also something of a letdown.

If you can suspend disbelief enough to overcome the lazy plotting and let yourself be immersed in the cool, hustler banter, there's enough here to keep the pages flipping.

29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars More like Roadkill, June 2, 2009

By 

B. Sanger (New Jersey) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Road Dogs: A Novel (Hardcover)

Nobody writes crime better than Leonard -- and very few wrote westerns better than Leonard. However, of all the novels he's given us, "Road Dogs" is at the bottom of the heap.

When I first heard Foley and Cundo were coming back I was ecstatic and didn't think for a second he could miss with that team. But miss and miss badly he has. As somebody mentioned above, nothing happens for 200-plus pages. Nothing. And quite frankly, this is some of the lamest "banter" ever in a Leonard novel. Plus, Dawn's plan was not only stupid and hideously planned, it wasn't even gripping. And the FBI guy tailing Foley leads to nothing.

A dog of a novel and giant disappointment for this Leonard fan.