It's a dubious proposition from the outset, destined to lead to trouble: Chloe Robinette, a high-end former Detroit call girl, asks her lingerie model roommate, Kelly Barr, to help her entertain a wealthy octogenarian trial lawyer named Anthony Paradiso. By "entertain," she means donning a cheerleader's skimpy skirt, but going topless, and doing rah-rah routines beside a TV set while Paradiso--"Mr. Paradise"--watches videotaped football games. A bit kinky for Kelly's taste, but she finally goes along--only to be caught in the middle of a contract hit on Paradiso and Chloe. Rather than tell what little she knows of these crimes, Kelly buys into a scheme, concocted by Paradiso's right-hand man, Montez Taylor, that could lead to a huge payoff from the lawyer's estate. But only if the 27-year-old Kelly can convincingly assume Chloe's identity ...

Elmore Leonard, who's made his career writing about not-too-bright bad guys, fills Mr. Paradise with several memorable specimens of that breed. In addition to Montez, who'd resented his politically incorrect boss for cutting him out of his will, there's also a bottom-feeding defense attorney, Avern Cohn, who runs a murder-for-hire operation on the side, and his well-armed employees of the month, "tough monkeys" Carl Fontana and Arthur Krupa. Less credibly and entertainingly crafted is Frank Delsa, the widowed homicide detective whose hunt for Paradiso's killers is complicated by his attraction to the curvilinear Kelly. This romantic subplot is overly predictable and deflates early expectations that the cunning young model is playing some deeper game here, working an angle that neither Delsa nor Montez anticipates.

After penning a string of character-propelled novels set in Florida (including Glitz, Out of Sight, and the particularly winning La Brava), it's good to see Leonard exploiting the Detroit backdrop again, as he did so expertly in a few of his earlier successes (City Primeval and Killshot, for instance). Yet while Mr. Paradise is rich with comic dialogue and cop-shop color, it never goes beyond the expectations of a Leonard work. This author is too good not to take more chances. --J. Kingston Pierce


From Publishers Weekly
Fifteen years after his last Detroit novel, Killshot, Leonard (whose most recent effort was Tishomingo Blues) returns to Motor City for another exemplary crime thriller. Chloe Robinette, an escort, is on a $5,000 monthly retainer from wealthy, retired octogenarian lawyer Anthony Paradiso; her duties include dancing topless in a cheerleader's outfit for him as he watches videos of old University of Michigan football games. On a night she persuades her roommate, Kelly Barr, a Victoria's Secret model, to join her in the dancing, Chloe and Paradiso, aka Mr. Paradise, are shot dead in Paradiso's mansion by two middle-aged white thugs. The hit has been set up by Paradiso's right-hand man, Montez Taylor, who's angry at Paradiso for cutting him out of his will; Montez then asks the shocked Kelly to impersonate Chloe in order to scam valuables from Paradiso's safe deposit box, to which Chloe had a key. Enter Frank Delsa, a Detroit homicide cop, who smells a rat and falls for Kelly while sorting matters out. She falls for him, too, but will the hit men and/or Montez take her out, since she can identify them as conspirators? Like the best crime thrillers-which means like most of Leonard's work-this novel is character-driven, and in its wonderfully rich, authentically human cast the story finds its surprises. The prose, as expected from Leonard, is perfect-in 304 pages, there's not a word that doesn't belong exactly where he's placed it. Brilliantly constructed, wise and tough, this book, like so many recent Leonards, offers a master class in how to write a novel.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
Elmore Leonard's novels -- Mr. Paradise is, astonishingly, his 39th -- tend to reduce even the most jaded, page-weary critic into a gushing ninth grader delivering a class book report. Phrases like "I couldn't stop reading it" and "excruciating suspense" actually appear in one's lead paragraph. Naturally, the surprised critic peers hard at the clichés on his computer monitor, then consults his inner Edmund Wilson, who typically advises a more tempered judgment and less hackneyed expressions. Right. The critic starts to change his opening sentences, sticking in words like "polyphonic" and "progression d'effet," but then remembers his actual experience of reading Glitz or Cat Chaser or Stick or Rum Punch or any of a dozen other Leonard crime classics. He lets his original words stand and adds "unputdownable."Elmore Leonard is into his seventies now, but you'd never know it from his writing. There's nothing old-guyish about Mr. Paradise, except for the title character, who's 84, a retired personal injuries attorney. And he's pretty spry at that, with a penchant for expensive hookers dressed as University of Michigan cheerleaders. When shelling out $5,000 you can be sure your personal cheerleader performs precisely to your liking as you watch videotapes of the Wolverines' best games. To your liking, by the way, would mean topless, with an M -- painted on by you with blue Magic Marker -- between perfect breasts, and nothing on under that pleated skirt of maize and blue. Go Blue! This being Elmore Leonard country -- his original stomping ground of Detroit, no less -- it's not utterly surprising that Mr. Paradise is himself soon in paradise. Gunned down in his own home. Nothing taken except a bottle of Christiana vodka. Yet who would ever want to pop a vicious retired shyster, a mean-spirited evil gnome who got a kick out of making his black help kowtow and Uncle Tom it in return for a possible mention in his will? It's up to Frank Delsa, acting head of homicide, to figure things out. It doesn't help that Frank, decent, good at his job and recently widowed, finds himself falling hard for what seems just the wrong girl -- blonde, Victoria's-Secret beautiful and, when he first meets her, dressed as a cheerleader.Readers would justifiably hire hit men to gun me down were I to reveal any more of the action of Mr. Paradise. And I really don't want that, if only because I hope to keep reading other Elmore Leonard novels in the years to come. (As it is, I've already taken great care to disguise a number of key facts in this new book's plot.) But I can safely make a few observations about Mr. Paradise and the master's oeuvre in general. Leonard, I think it's clear, views himself as primarily a stylist. The contemporary crime novel -- one might just as well call it a roman noir, more Cornell Woolrich than Ross MacDonald -- offers the artist in him a means for reproducing the diverse registers of American speech. In fact, Leonard bravely goes where lesser writers might hesitate. In Mr. Paradise alone he takes us inside the mind of a fashion model with a taste for alexanders and hip-hop, lets us share in the jive of a ghetto kid named Jerome, gives us the jokey, sports-filled conversation of a couple of working stiffs in Detroit Tigers caps, and reproduces the tired, jokey give-and-take of an exhausted homicide squad. And that's just for starters. Listen, for instance, to a nameless counter girl at McDonald's describe a robbery:"The three dudes come in -- I look at the one and think I know him. Yeah, it's Big Baby, still with the puffy cheeks. He lived down the street from us on Edison. I'm about to call to him, Hey Big Baby, and surprise him 'cause he won't remember me from living on Edison. But then I see all three dudes pulling guns, Big Baby taking a sawed-off shotgun from outta his clothes, the two dudes with nines they hold sideways -- know what I'm saying -- like they can shoot these guns any way they want. The one dude goes to the back, the other dude has his gun on Mr. Crowley by the french fry station, telling him he wants the money he knows is put somewhere. Big Baby tells us in front -- they's three of us -- get down on the floor and don't move. Right then the one yelling at Mr. Crowley, the manager, shoots him and Big Baby says, 'What you shoot him for?' like he can't believe it."Now here's a model, talking about a forthcoming fashion show at the Detroit Institute of the Arts:"It's Chanel's Fall Collection. They decide who wears what for about eighty different looks coming down the runway -- and that's in just twenty-five minutes -- so most of the girls will have four changes. I'll have five tomorrow. . . . My favorite that I wear in the show, I think of as kind of a biker look, a nubby burgundy suit that barely covers my butt, silver chains around my neck and my hips and these cool velvety boots. My Harley look, I think it'll stop the show. They'll start with suits and dresses, get the audience sitting up, and then swing into active wear, ski and apres ski this year."Leonard clearly knows how people talk, but style is more than just words on a page, it's a matter of narrative rhythm too. His elaborate plots are built out of scenes, almost as if he were presenting his novel as a play. There's no central narrative intelligence telling the story. Instead Leonard slightly modulates his own narrative voice to match that of the key figure in each chapter. So he drops inside the head of Jerome as the kid hangs with a pair of killers, or into that of Montez, Mr. Paradise's chief factotum, as this would-be smooth operator cruises around the city in the man's brown Lexus, dressed in a "tan cashmere topcoat, muted gold tie against dark gray underneath." Both are black and criminal, but one feels the effort Montez makes to look dapper and slick. Nearly all of Leonard's mature novels follow the same general pattern: At least three plot lines, focusing on different if loosely linked characters, gradually converge. By the last chapters the suspense, and a reader's nerves, will have been ratcheted to the highest possible pitch. In these novels, after all, one can never be sure until the final page who will walk away with the money or who will live and who will die. There are always too many guns lying around, and, with an almost Chekhovian inevitability, somebody will finally pick up one of them. Oddly enough, through all this Leonard manages to keep his tone laid-back, beyond affect, almost light-hearted, even when very bad things seem likely to happen to good people. The man deeply admires what one might call existential unflappability; Be Cool -- the title of one of his novels -- might be his own watchword. I suspect that this traditional masculine ethos ultimately derives from the heroes of old cowboy movies, those in which the quiet, underestimated drifter turns out to be Shane. Little wonder that Elmore Leonard started his career by writing westerns and actually subtitled his first successful crime novel "High Noon in Detroit."While reading Mr. Paradise, one is serenely happy just to be reading it. Afterward, though, one may think back a little and note a few loose ends. Tony Paradiso Jr. is described as more scummy than his father but is ultimately under-utilized. Would two white, racist contract killers allow the black Jerome to tag along with them? And how likely is true love between a police detective and a jet-setting knockout? (Admittedly, Leonard often uses sexual relations between people of radically different backgrounds as plot engines.) At times, I even felt that Leonard might be straining to sound hip, with too many references to Lil' Kim, Eminem and other rap performers. On the other hand, he's pretty funny about "The Love Swing." And he's really clever in how he manages to use a dead woman's pubic hair to prove another woman's true identity.If a writer lives long enough or produces a steady output of good books, there comes a point when he or she passes beyond mere criticism. Readers grow simply grateful. We'd rather have any new Patrick O'Brian or Iris Murdoch or Dick Francis or Elmore Leonard than none at all. Sometimes this allows us to excuse all sorts of weakness. But in the case of Mr. Paradise we don't have to settle for mere gratitude. We can rejoice. It is unputdownable, packed with excruciating suspense and I couldn't stop reading it. Oh yes, it's also polyphonic and a masterpiece of progression d'effet. Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.


From Bookmarks Magazine
Like his previous noir novels, Mr. Paradise, dedicated to the Detroit Police Homicide Section, is "unputdownable" (Washington Post). A few loose ends, too much hipness--so what? We know whodunit early on, so Leonard devotes his energy to his quirky cast of lowlifes, replicating diverse American linguists including a McDonald's counter girl and a Chanel fashion model. Although the novel questions the many forms deception takes, it casts no moral shadow on the characters' questionable pursuits. Leonard "is no simple moralist," writes The New York Times Book Review. "Rather, he brilliantly involves himself in playing the same game he is exposing." And it's a game all readers should play. Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.


From AudioFile
Listening to Leonard's latest thriller is paradise found. That's because after a 15-year absence from the city for which his early mysteries were famous, Leonard returns to Detroit. It's one of his better capers. Chloe, a striking blonde who makes $5,000 a week entertaining an 84-year-old retired lawyer, talks her look-alike roommate into joining the party, so to speak. While one of the blondes is upstairs, Paradiso and the other are murdered by two thugs. The murders are investigated by Delsa, the acting police chief, who takes a shine to Kelly-or is she Chloe? Robert Forster's sonorous, sometimes raspy, voice is wonderful for the male characters-especially the too-stupid-to-be-believed killers. He's perfect for this Leonard ditty because he realizes that for this one the narrator has to sound just a tad sharper, funnier, and quirkier than ever. A.L.H. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
It's time for Elmore Leonard to be outted. He is not a noir writer and hasn't been one since his early Detroit novels (City Primeval). What he does write is a violent, hard-boiled, streetwise brand of romantic comedy, usually starring a hero and heroine who, through an unfailing ability to think on their feet, find their way out of an outlandish mess. Happily-ever-aftering, unimaginable in real noir, remains a tempting if hard-won possibility in Leonard's world. So it is in this tale of a Detroit cop who falls for a sort-of suspect in the double murder of a high-class hooker and an elderly millionaire who likes to watch tapes of University of Michigan football games while a couple of twentysomething beauties, clad in cheerleader outfits, perform cheers with dirty lyrics. Harmless enough, until the game is interrupted by two slow-witted hitmen who kill the millionaire and one of the cheerleaders and--in a quintessential Leonard moment--steal a bottle of vodka. It's left for Detroit cop Frank Delsa to solve the murder and fall in love with cheerleader number two, who can't quite decide if she's committed to the cop or to getting her hands on whatever might be inside the millionaire's safety-deposit box. There's the matter of the loose-cannon hitmen, too, but Frank and his cheerleader think very well on their feet, and if they can just catch a break, might be in line for a little happily-ever-aftering of their own. Leonard virtually invented this genre with Stick (1983), and he's been doing it effortlessly ever since. Pure entertainment. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
It's been years since Elmore Leonard last took readers on a tour of the seamy side of Detroit (in Killshot), but his flair for gritty realism and dark humor hasn't changed a bit. Detective Frank Delsa, acting lieutenant of Squad Seven, Homicide Section, Detroit Police Department, has big trouble. His squad of eight is down to only three -- they're short on manpower and long on bodies. And there's one case that's practically taken over Delsa's life. Somehow, Tony Paradiso (a.k.a. Mr. Paradise) and his high-priced call girl were shot to death in the elderly ex-lawyer's magnificent mansion. It doesn't take Delsa long to figure out that the victim's personal assistant, Montez, arranged a hit on his employer. What's puzzling the cop is why Kelly, the woman who was upstairs with Montez at the time of the murder, tried to claim the dead woman's identity. To gain Delsa's sympathy, delectable and devious Kelly's only telling him part of the story -- the part about Montez threatening to have her killed if she didn't lie for him. She's not so forthcoming about the reason behind the lie, the fact that there is something valuable in a safe-deposit box that Montez needs the dead woman's signature in order to claim. If Kelly's going to help Montez, she wants a slice of the pie￯﾿ﾽ. This one's pure Elmore Leonard, with the line between the bad guys and the good guys blurring as alliances shift against a backdrop of greed, violence, sex, and murder. Sue Stone

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Roommates Kelly and Chloe are enjoying their lives and their downtown Detroit loft just fine. Kelly is a Victoria's Secret catalog model. Chloe is an escort, until she decides to ditch her varied clientele in favor of a steady gig as girlfriend to eighty-four-year-old retired lawyer Tony Paradiso, a.k.a. Mr. Paradise." "Evenings at Mr. Paradise's house, there's always an old Michigan football game on TV. And when Chloe's around, there's a cheerleader, too, complete with pleated skirt and blue-and-gold pompoms. One night Chloe convinces Kelly to join in the fun, along with Montez Taylor, Tony's smooth-talking right-hand man." But things go awry and before the end of the evening there will be two corpses, two angry hit men, one switch of identity, a safe-deposit box full of loot up for grabs, and, fast on the scene, detective Frank Delsa, who now has a double homicide - and a beautiful, willful witness - to add to his already heavy caseload.

FROM THE CRITICS

The New York Times

Elmore Leonard's 40th book, Mr. Paradise, is filled with ironic quotation marks, though he doesn't put them on the page. Tone is everything. How, exactly, can you be sure what the tone is? Well, you can't. Leonard addresses those who think they hear the same music he does, but who are open to questioning the familiar, to listening carefully and seeing when something has a different emphasis. … Mr. Paradise is about deception. People deceive through false identity (appropriating, dissembling), just as they, themselves, have been deceived -- whether by the implied promise of collapsed dot-coms or by positive, false assumptions about family. — Ann Beattie

The Washington Post

If a writer lives long enough or produces a steady output of good books, there comes a point when he or she passes beyond mere criticism. Readers grow simply grateful. We'd rather have any new Patrick O'Brian or Iris Murdoch or Dick Francis or Elmore Leonard than none at all. Sometimes this allows us to excuse all sorts of weakness. But in the case of Mr. Paradise we don't have to settle for mere gratitude. We can rejoice. It is unputdownable, packed with excruciating suspense and I couldn't stop reading it. Oh yes, it's also polyphonic and a masterpiece of progression d'effet. — Michael Dirda

Publishers Weekly

Leonard (Tishomingo Blues, etc.) has long been the master of sparse, precise language. Consequently, his prose and dialogue have evolved over the years to the point of having a rhythm and style unique unto themselves. Fortunately, Forster falls neatly into sync with the author. His clear, matter-of-fact recitation is perfectly suited to drawing the listener into a world where violence, deception and death are simply a practical side of doing business and delivered with as much passion as a Detroit police report. The story follows the investigation sparked by the death of an 84-year-old millionaire-the Mr. Paradise of the title. Leonard brings together an eclectic mixture of pragmatic cops, working-class hit men, crooked lawyers, con men and gangbangers, all brought to life through Forster's smooth, understated delivery. If there is any flaw in the performance, it is that by keeping his reading so low-key and laconic, there are a few sections of dialogue where the listener may be confused as to which character is speaking. But it is this same delivery that enhances the humor in the book, often with laugh-out-loud results. So, even though it would have been nice if Forster gave the characters' voices a bit more inflection, this is a small criticism of an overall fine production. Simultaneous release with the HarperCollins hardcover (Forecasts, Nov. 24, 2003). (Jan.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

This novel marks Leonard's return to the Detroit cop genre that he popularized two decades ago. Det. Frank Delsa investigates the contract murder of wealthy octogenarian Anthony Paradiso (Mr. Paradise), who is shot while watching a taped college football game as a hooker dressed as a cheerleader entertains. As in other Leonard books, Mr. Paradise is populated with stupid criminals and endearingly quirky characters including Paradiso's slick assistant, Montez Taylor and has a number of satisfying plot twists. However, its main twist is Frank's disappointingly predictable romance with a Victoria's Secret model who may be involved in the crime. By the standards of the author's more recent work, this is a lackluster effort and is not strengthened by actor Robert Forster's comparatively languid narration. Recommended only for libraries with exceptionally avid Leonard fans. R. Kent Rasmussen, Thousand Oaks, CA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews