Rum Punch - Softcover

Leonard, Elmore

3.93

11,346 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0385332807 ISBN 13: 9780385332804

Publisher: Delta, 1998

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Jackie Burke's future looks grim. She's been a flight attendant for twenty years and she's down to working for an island-hopping airline the day she lands in Palm Beach International with fifty grand and is taken into custody. The Feds know Jackie works for a man who sells machine guns to bad guys, but they don't know his name. Jackie looks at her options. She can tell what she knows about Ordell Robbie, the gun dealer, and get off--except that if Ordell suspects you're talking about him, you're dead. Or she can keep her mouth shut and do five years. Then she meets Max Cherry--late fifties, recently separated, and just starting to think that maybe there's more to life than being a bail bondsman--and sees she has more options than she thought.

Max is hooked on Jackie from the first time he sees her. But when he meets Ordell, he has quite a different reaction. Nineteen years a bail bondsman, Max knows trouble when he sees it.

Jackie comes up with a plan to play the Feds off against the bad guys and walk off with Ordell's money, but she needs Max's help. Max allows himself to be drawn in just to stay near Jackie, yet he can't help but wonder if he's being used. As for Ordell, he's making it now after years of busted deals. No one is going to stand in the way of his million-dollar payoff...

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Review:

Readers who come to Rum Punch after having seen Quentin Tarantino's 1997 film adaptation, Jackie Brown, are in for a few surprises. Mainly, Jackie Burke is a 44-year-old white woman (but just as hard-boiled as Pam Grier), bail bondsman Max Cherry has a much more prominent role in the proceedings, and the novel takes place in Miami--not Los Angeles. The core of the story, however, remains the same: when the cops try to use Jackie to get at Ordell Robbie, the gunrunner she's been bringing cash into the country for, she hatches a plan--with help from Max--to keep the money for herself. It all comes together in the traditional Elmore Leonard style, where the conversations are as crisply written and suspenseful as the action scenes. --Ron Hogan

From the Publisher:

"Unputdownable ! Beneath its fast moving surface, Rum Punch is a novel about growing old, about the way that time changes us, about the old dream of starting over again and its cost."
-- The Washington Post Book World

"Expertly blended...potent Dutch"
-- Chicago Sun Times

"Rum Punch is Leonard's best work! He brilliantly reaffirms his right to the title of America's finest crime-fiction writer."
--People

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