Fist full of plot twists

>> Elmore Leonard’s Tishomingo Blues is ready for Hollywood

by JULIET WATERS

If dialogue were underwear, black thong is what you’d find in an Elmore Leonard best seller. His long, entertaining stretches of short and snappy repartee are made for Hollywood, but too often directors have botched a Leonard book by following the plot and butchering the talk. Plot, which Leonard once confessed he makes up as he goes along, has never been his strength. Cast Tishomingo Blues properly and the resulting film could be as good or better than Get Shorty. Keep to the story, and audiences might not be able to find their way out of the theatre.
Set in Mississippi, the story is told mostly from the perspective of Dennis Lenahan, an aging high diver who makes a living touring amusement parks and hotels with his one-man show. In the world of high-risk diving, “aging” is relative. Dennis is described as being “twice the age” of the amusement park groupies he sleeps with, which on a legal day, puts him in his early thirties.

Such is the symbiotic relationship between Leonard and Hollywood that it’s hard not to cast as you read. If he could keep the manic energy down to a slow simmer, Chris Rock might be perfect as Robert, the young Detroit drug czar-in-waiting. Matthew McConaughey would be perfect as Dennis, if he didn’t have to play a Yankee in a civil war reenactment.
“A civil war what?” you ask? Did I mention the plot problem? I shouldn’t even attempt to tuck this endlessly complicated twister into a compact synopsis. But, it’s a job.

During a nighttime practice, from his 80-foot perch, Dennis witnesses a murder. The culprits from the “Dixie Mafia” know Dennis has seen them. But hicks that they are, they figure threatening Dennis will be enough to shut him up. By the time they realize their mistake, Dennis has a protector, namely Robert, who has witnessed the crime from his hotel window. Amiable, confident, cool and scarier than a fridge full of crack, Robert’s impressed with Dennis’s risk-seeking personality. Thus, he decides to mentor him in the drug trade.
Robert and Jerry, his boss, have come down from Detroit to make inroads down South. But first, everyone—including the hick gangsters and the fed who’s been sent to investigate the murder—have to dress up as civil war soldiers in a “reenactment.” A growing American pastime, apparently; Robert describes one in Jackson, Michigan, as “a couple of thousand people dressed as civilians, women and children, General Grant, Robert E. Lee, the cavalry, lot of cannons, people selling civil war memorabilia, kielbasa and grilled Italian sausage.”
When one gets to the chapter where a bunch of mobsters dressed in grey and blue are running around with muskets and cannons, one may be tempted to recast this as a Bugs Bunny classic. But Leonard has always had a light hand with the violence.

The sheer absurdity of the plot, however, is a minor problem, as one is drawn into the fascinating conversations between Dennis and Robert, who share a mutual love of the blues and history. The town where Tishomingo Blues is set is at the crossroads where legendary guitarist Robert Johnson is said to have sold his soul to the devil. The symbolism of this anecdote is never far from the action of this story.

The one disappointment is the absence of a really interesting female. In the past, Leonard has created stronger, more realistic female characters than many women crime writers seem capable of (see Jackie Brown, the Tarantino adaptation of Rum Punch that re-launched Pam Grier’s career). Then again, if everyone ended up happy, it wouldn’t be the blues. :

Tishomingo Blues by Elmore Leonard, William Morrow, hc, 308pp, $25.95