PRONTO (Raylan Givens #1)(audiobook) by Elmore Leonard

 







Originally published in 1993.
Published by HarperAudio in 2010.
Read by Alexander Adams.
Duration: 5 hours, 54 minutes.
Unabridged.

I am a big fan of the TV series Justified which features a character named Raylan Givens. I stumbled across this audiobook and was pleased to see that Elmore Leonard had done more than create a character for a TV show - he had written a whole series of books about that character.

Synopsis:

Pronto starts out in Miami and is mostly about Harry Arno, a man who runs an illegal bookkeeping operation (just to be clear, he takes illegal bets, he does do illegal accounting). Harry is ready to retire but is unclear how he will extract himself from the organized crime syndicate that "protects" his operation and likes their 50% take. Or...maybe it's less than that. Turns out Harry has been cooking the books for years and has been taking a cut out of the mob boss's cut for years, maybe even decades.

A U.S. Attorney has decided to take down the organized crime boss that Harry reports to. The U.S. Attorney assumes that Harry is basically honest with his organized crime boss and decides to pressure Harry by setting him up to look like he's skimming money from the organized crime boss's cut. The idea is to make the crime boss mad and Harry will run to the U.S. Attorney's office for protection in exchange for testifying in court.

U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens thinks that this is a raw deal so he gives Harry a warning. Harry pretends to go along and agrees to go into hiding if Raylan Givens is the one that takes him in. Raylan agrees and Harry ditches him in an airport and flies away to Italy. The U.S. Attorney decides it wasn't much of a loss, but Raylan can't stand the injury to his pride of having someone in his custody escape so he takes time off of work and goes to Italy to find Harry...

My review:

I was hoping for better. I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5, so it's not horrible - but I was hoping for better. 
Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

Most of the book is about Harry Arno. The second theme of the book is the American expatriate poet Ezra Pound. Pound had lived in the town that Harry Arno fled to and there are plenty of quotes from his poems and discussions about him throughout the last third of the book. Pound was anti-Semitic and openly supported the German Nazis and the Italian Fascists during World War II. Clearly, Elmore Leonard was interested in Pound and decided to work him into the book.

Unfortunately, this felt more like filler rather than anything that added to the story in any sort of meaningful way and I think it hurt the book quite a bit. I doubt I will be moving on to the second book in the series.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: Pronto (Raylan Givens #1) by Elmore Leonard.

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