I’m copping this ASAFP.

Elmore Leonard’s 44th novel DJIBOUTI is out today and I’ll be picking it up ASAP. After turning 85 on Monday he is still going as strong as ever. I like to be surprised, so the most I’ve found out is that we’re talking pirates and a 6’6″ (ladies’) man named Xavier LeBo on a small boat with a tough, young American blonde film-maker called Dara Barr. The last time ‘Dutch’ took us to Africa was in his 2000 novel PAGAN BABIES which saw troubled priest Father Terry Dunne on the run from the Detroit mafia in Kenya drinking banana beer in smokey bars. This sounds every bit as wild. WooHoo!

Elmore Leonard will be at Barnes & Noble 2289 Broadway, New York, NY on October 12th at 7PM

I just finished Drama City, my first novel by award-winning former The Wire writer George Pelecanos (thanks Tony Sr.). Dark, gritty and full of life and color, this was a thrilling read from page one. Set in Washington D.C., Pelecanos paints a picture that only someone immersed in the living, breathing city could paint. It’s a real punch in the gut. Here is an excerpt:

“Lorenzo picked up the cat, a Persian, from a woman in Park Morton and drove North. Going up Georgia Avenue he saw single mothers moving their kids along the sidewalks, young girls showing off their bodies, church women, men who went to work each day, men who did nothing at all, studious kids who were going to make it, stoop kids on the edge, kids already in the life, a man smoking a cigarette in the doorway of his barbershop and the private detective with the big shoulders talking to a white dude in front of his place, had the sign with the magnifying glass out front. It was a city of masks, the kind that Nigel had said hung in theaters. Smiling faces and sad and all kinds of faces in between”.

While I sat waiting for the Coen Brothers to team up with crime mystery grandmaster Elmore Leonard, along came FX with JUSTIFIED. JUSTIFIED is a series of hour-long episodes based on Leonard’s short story ‘FIRE IN THE HOLE”.  As usual, ‘Dutch,’ as he is known to his legions of fans, comes correct as Executive Producer.

In Miami, U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens has given Tommy Bucks 24 hours to get out of town. With several hours to go, the marshal shows up at a waterfront restaurant where Bucks is eating, and sits down for a chat. Shit-talking and gunfire ensues. Raylan is transferred to Kentucky where he grew up and from there, it takes off. You’ve got all the wild characters from a bunch of Leonard’s novels; detectives, gun molls, White supremacists, inmates, slick-talking wise guys and a pastor played by Doug E. Doug, who the police chief describes as “…from Ethiopia, by-way-of Jamaica, by-way-of being completely fulla shit.” That and all of the language and pop culture nuggets that the Detroit native is known for. Five episodes in, it’s damn good.

JUSTIFIED Airs on Tuesdays at 10PM on FX