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Budapest Times

Dumb hoods screw up in kidnap gone wrong

Latter-day editions of books by late American crime writer Charles Willeford (1919-1988) have featured the front-cover accolade by late American crime writer Elmore Leonard (1925-2013) that 'No one writes a better crime novel than Charles Willeford'. That's exceedingly generous praise from a man for whom many would offer exactly the same sentiment, that 'No one writes a better crime novel than Elmore Leonard'. While not wanting to enter a debate about who might have been the better of the two, it has to be said that Leonard's output of some 45 novels outstrips Willeford's of 18 or so, with both maintaining a remarkably high standard of idiosyncratic plotting, characterisation and dialogue in a felonious field that includes many other notable penmen and penwomen. (Leonard and Willeford have been great favourites at The Budapest Times for years, where we've consumed some 35 of Leonard's novels and just about all of Willeford's, but forced by threat of torture into a decision of some sort, rather than choosing one author we would at least opt for the latter's superlative 'Sideswipe' (1987) as nigh on unbeatable.) Well, just about matchless, that is, for 'The Switch', first published in 1978. is top-notch story-telling too, with its requisite badasses who are basically too stupid to be successful badasses. The badasses here are Ordell Robbie and Louis Gara, Ordell a light-skinned Negro and Gara a dark-skinned Caucasian, so they are about even in shade (a typical Leonard touch, that). Not only are Leonard's hoods often dumb and screwing up, they can end up trying to rip off each other too, with guess-what results. Louis is going to be the dumb-ass here. Leonard liked to write things in a bit of an oblique way, so when he tells us that 'Louis had been down in Huntsville, Texas, keeping fit, clearing scrub all day, having his supper at five P.M. and turning the light out at ten', that's Elmore code for Louis having been in jail. Likewise, reading that 'Louis wore a cap – this summer a faded tan cap – straight and low over his eyes. Louis didn't go in for jewelry; a watch was enough, a $1,200 Benrus he'd picked up at the Flamingo Motor Hotel, McAllen, Texas', well, that's another roundabout for the reader to understand – he's a thief. He has indeed been away for nearly three years, and so now that he's out of stir and back in Detroit, his pal Ordell is taking him for a ride in Ordell's tan Ford van so that he can see the latest sights of the Motor Capital. As they cruise past the monumental Renaissance Centre on the riverfront, all glass and steel rising 700 feet in a five-tower complex, all Louis can say is that, 'Wow. It's big'. Ordell is nonplussed, asking, 'That's all you can say? It's big?' to which Louis adds: 'It's really big. If it fell over you could walk across it to Canada.' Another sight described by Ordell: '… a fine example of neo-ghetto… You can see it's not your classic ghetto yet, not quite ratty or rotten enough, but it's coming. Over there on the left, first whore of the day. Out for her vitamin C. And there's some more – hot pants with a little ass hanging out, showing the goods.' Louis was jailed after gunning his car at someone he didn't like to make him jump but cut it too close and broke the man's legs. 'I was arrested, charged with attempted murder, plea-bargained it down to felonious assault and got two to five in Huntsville. Served thirty months, same amount of time I was in the Navy, and I'll tell you something. Even being at [naval station] Norfolk, Virginia, I liked the Navy a little better.' Leonard is a master of casual humour. Ordell recounts how he went down to the Bahamas about seven, eight years ago. 'I had some money to spend, I said hey, go down to a paradise island and have some of those big rum drinks and watch the natives do all that quaint shit beating on the oil drums, you know?' And then there's Richard, full name Richard Edgar Monk, a cultist, racist, anti-communist, anti-semite, ex-private security guard with an arsenal of rifles, revolvers, a musket, shotguns – one sawed-off – grenades, bayonets, knives, a gas mask, a German helmet, an Afrika Korps soft hat, Nazi armbands, belt buckles, an SS death's head insignia, and boxes of cartridges and shotgun shells. His car has a shotgun mount, roll-bar and police siren. Richard is recruited because Ordell and Louis plan to kidnap the wife of a rich man and they need Richard's house to hold her until her husband pays a million-dollar ransom. Alongside Richard's World War Two memorabilia, the red, white and black swastika on the wall and photos of Hitler and Heinrich Himmler in his black SS uniform, Leonard notes in another nice touch that the couch and easychairs have crocheted antimacassars on the arms and headrests. There's something weird about Richard. The kidnap victim will be Mickey Dawson, the 'tennis mum' of a spoiled brat teenage son, Bo. She's sick to the teeth of her husband Frank. 'He's a pure asshole,' she says. For the irritable Frank, nothing his wife does is right and he's on her back all the time. Unknown to her, he has apartments in Detroit renovated with stolen materials and appliances, renting to pimps and prostitutes, grossing at least $100,000 a month but reporting only half as income, his money going into a numbered bank account. Frank also regularly goes to the Bahamas for a day or two, lately for several days, supposedly working on land development with foreign investors. He has a mistress there, Melanie. Ordell and Louis have a selection of rubber faces including four Richard Nixons, Frankenstein, a vampire, a witch, monsters, Micky Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy for disguise. They grab Mickey and take her to Richard's. It has all the makings of a terrible mess, Elmore Leonard-style – the two hoods and their psycho pal, and the Frank-Mickey-Melanie triangle. Unfortunately, unknown to the kidnappers, Frank has divorce papers in the pipeline and he wants to marry Melanie, so why should he want to pay out a million dollars to secure Mickey's release? In fact it would save him a lot of trouble if the kidnappers kill her. There's an interesting question that Leonard might be subtly leaving us to consider – are Ordell, Louis and Richard any more screwed up in their criminal ways than the 'respectable' Frank? The outcome is unseen and nicely absurd, a satisfying ending to an enjoyable book . The other two newly resissued Leonard paperbacks alongside 'The Switch' are 'Swag' (1976) and 'Rum Punch' (1992). Another 10 will follow at the end of this year and in March 2026. It's all about keeping the catalogue alive. These latest paperbacks don't mean that Elmore Leonard is back, because he never went away, and probably won't either. A couple of his tenets for good writing to keep the reader engaged were to never use a verb other than 'said' to carry dialogue, and to never use an adverb to modify the verb 'said' to keep the focus on the dialogue itself. For these and his other rules we remark that we are exceedingly grateful.