LaBrava

Here is Elmore Leonard's best novel to date, which says a good deal indeed.

Joe LaBrava, ex-Secret Service agent, independent photographer, has retreated to South Miami Beach. He likes it there. He becomes involved in a flimflam as bizarre as it is original and audacious, as well as with a cast of superbly drawn local characters: a hotel owner who remembers when Miami Beach was pure and clean; a redneck former cop at once less and more lethal than he seems; a Cuban refugee who kills to stay alive and performs as a go-go dancer for pure pleasure; and at the heart of it all . . . a once famous actress with a split image of herself who draws LaBrava into a world at once shatteringly real and deliciously make-believe.

Stamped with Elmore Leonard's famed trademarks—crackling, realistic dialogue, a cinematic sense of locale, and always characters who are as sharply etched and authentic as any in contemporary fiction—LaBrava shows preeminently why Elmore Leonard is one of America's premier, newly discovered novelists, now fully come into his own.