52 Pickup: A Novel
Elmore Leonard
Language: English
Pages: 336
ISBN: 0062266004
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
52 Pickup is a rip-roaring thriller from master of crime fiction Elmore Leonard, the New York Times bestselling author of Raylan, Get Shorty, Killshot, and other novels of suspense.
Detroit businessman Harry Mitchell has had only one affair in his twenty-two years of happy matrimony. Unfortunately, someone caught his indiscretion on film and now wants Harry to fork over one hundred grand to keep his infidelity a secret. And if Harry doesn’t pay up, the blackmailer and his associates plan to press a lot harder—up to and including homicide, if necessary.
But the psychos picked the wrong pigeon for their murderous scam. Because Harry Mitchell doesn’t get mad...he gets even.
way it sounded.” He saw the opening and said, “Barb, we haven’t really talked yet. But I don’t think this is the place.” He sounded sincere. She said, “That’s all right. It’s about time I was getting home.” “No, no—I mean I think we should go somewhere else. Have a quiet talk. It’s only a little after ten.” He leaned closer now, beginning to move in. “Is there someplace you’d especially like to go? Have one drink? Maybe a couple? Relax, and have a good talk?” She shook her head. “No, I don’t
a cop, standing by the door to his office. So he walked down the aisle and took a seat and watched the last fifteen minutes of Going Down on the Farm, now in its Second Smash Week. Saved by his bladder. Maybe the plainclothesman was on the vice squad and they were cracking down on dirty movies again. That was a possibility. Or maybe they were selling Police Field Day tickets to local merchants. Yeah, or they were here to give him a good citizenship award. Bullshit, Mitchell had changed his mind,
then looked at her lying twisted on the pavement and prodded her in the ribs with the toe of his boot. Barbara, frowning, looked at him as he got back in the panel. “I heard an awful noise. Loud noise somewhere.” “Fireworks,” Alan said. “Somebody celebrating.” He checked them into a Holiday Inn on the south end of Mt. Clemens. Barbara was a little slow-moving, beginning to drag after her high; but he got her out of the panel without any trouble and into the nice twenty-buck room with a
“Apartment by Palmer Park. On Merrill.” The girl said, still cautious, “She moved from there months ago.” “I know she did.” Mitchell waited. “She was going to school,” the girl said. “I think Wayne.” “Not anymore,” Mitchell said. “I called. She hasn’t been to class in over a week.” “Well, you know more about her than I do,” the girl said. “I never saw her much. I didn’t even know she quit school.” Mitchell was silent, thoughtful for a moment, before he said, “Well, thanks anyway,” and
unstinting infusion of narrative pleasure in a prose miraculously purged of all false qualities, there was no one quite like Elmore Leonard. I thought we might begin at the beginning, and talk about your early years as a writer and how you got started. In my experience, everyone at the age of fourteen or fifteen (or a bit earlier) starts to commune with themselves and to keep notes and to keep a diary. It’s only the writers who go on with that kind of adolescent communion. Was it like that for