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Post by pimpinainteasy on Sept 13, 2019 3:38:07 GMT
"His books don't sound like he had any fun writing them."
One of the characters in Up in Honey's Room muses about the books of Zane Grey. It is a criticism nobody would ever level at Elmore Leonard.
Up in Honey's Room is a talky and carefully plotted thriller that unravels during the second world war. It is also a sleazy comedy of manners set among the cops, low lives and robbers/nazis of the time.
The characters are developed through dialog and nothing else.
Honey Deal is a delightfully sordid, promiscuous and cool as a cucumber woman who has the hots for multiple men including Nazis.
Jurgen and Otto are Nazis on the run. Jurgen is portrayed quite sympathetically by Leonard.
Carl Webster is a tough detective, who is sent to Detroit, to hunt down Jurgen and Otto. He is crazy about Honey but is also loyal to his wife, who is in the marines.
Walter Schoen, Honey's ex-husband who resembles Himmler and does not get her jokes, is a no-good Nazi who dreams of murdering Roosevelt in a suicide attack.
Alcoholic double agent and countess Vera is providing false information to the Nazis while organizing meetings with Americans sympathetic to Hitler. Her murderous cross dressing servant and lover Bohdan wants to run away with Vera.
The finale when they are all forced to strip naked and lined up to be shot by the murderous Bohdan (so that it would wipe off any evidence connecting his lover Vera to the Nazis) is ingenious. But he does not know Vera has another trick up her sleeve.
Novels set during world war 2 are usually about the mental and physical devastation unleashed by the war. "Up in Honey's Room" is violent, but also tongue in cheek and outrageously funny. Elmore Leonard is having fun with these characters, perhaps suggesting that people weren't too bad back then. They were just caught in the whirlpool of history. For example, Otto who is supposed to be a Nazi, loves reading American novels and hooks up with a Jewish art thief. While Jurgen once harbored dreams of becoming a Matador in Spain. But here they are, playing at being Nazi spies.
The book might have inspired Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds. I hope Terry Zwigoff makes a movie based on it.
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Post by Carl LaFong on Sept 13, 2019 21:04:46 GMT
A female US marine in WWII?
Nah.
Good review though.
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Post by pimpinainteasy on Sept 17, 2019 2:19:49 GMT
A female US marine in WWII? Nah. Good review though. She taught how to handle guns in the Marines.
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Post by nutsberryfarm 🏜 on Dec 22, 2019 3:04:22 GMT
sounds fun!
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