Pure Dutch …

… The Streak — The Barnes & Noble Review. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

By the mid-'80s, at any rate, Leonard was solidly in bestsellerdom, the fat of the land, lauded and blurbed by Stephen King over here and Christopher Lehmann-Haupt over there. Money and respect? Dangerous, very dangerous. A combination to kill one's muse stone dead. He could have got bored or begun to repeat himself. Instead he hit what I propose to call The Streak:Freaky Deaky (1988), Killshot (1989), and Get Shorty (1990). Three years, three radically different novels, three effortless expansions or elaborations of Leonard-ness. "Chris Mankowski's last day on the job, two in the afternoon, two hours to go, he got a call to dispose of a bomb." So beginsFreaky Deaky -- Instant Leonard, weighted just right, the eye hopping from clause to clause like one of those little bouncing balls on the screen of a karaoke machine. The line could read -- by the old dispensation should read -- "It was Chris Mankowski's last day on the job, and at two in the afternoon,with two hours to go, he got a call to dispose of a bomb." But it doesn't, so where those words are missing we have negative space -- a jazzily charged absence that defines the affect of the book. The inner ear picks it up, registers it, appreciates it. And the inner ear feels…cool.