Product Description

Ride down Woodward Avenue into the Motor City, toward a deadly show-down between dedicated homicide detective Raymond Cruz and a psychopathic murderer, "Oklahoma Wildman" Clement Mansell, who picked the wrong town to kill someone, even if it was only a crooked judge.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2242733 in Books
• Published on: 1999-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 275 pages

About the Author

Elmore Leonard has written more than three dozen books including Cuba Libre, Rum Punch, and Get Shorty, and numerous screenplays. He has an unparalleled reputation among lovers of mayhem, suspense, and just plain wonderful writing. A Grand Master Award winner of the Mystery Writers of America, he has been likened to everyone from Balzac to Dostoevsky to Dickens to Dashiell Hammett -- but he is, in fact, entirely and entertainingly sui generis.

He lives in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

Customer Reviews

Not up to what you would expect from a Leonard classic
This is one of those Elmore Leonard books that you just wont find in a bookstore. City Primeval has the characters you expect from a Leonard book, it has the banter, it has the tounge in cheek humor, and it has the plot that Leonard used to such a degree of sucess later on. But in the end, this book just does not meld together in the way that Leonard later perfected. The characters, the bad guys are just a little too stupid and evil here. The whole story relies so heavily upon them, that it falls apart due to Leonards not having yet found his magic that pops up in later books like Get Shorty.

This book was written almost three decades ago and is dated. I think that this might have been released right before Leonard went on a tear and churned out a good ten classics that are not only hillarious, but influenced a generation of writers like Carl Hiasson and Kinky Friedman. Leonard started out writing westerns and crime novels mostly set in Detroit where this book is set. Later he moved all of the action to Florida, and these are where the best of his works are set.

The book starts out with Clement Mansell, a ruthless punk, gunning down a judge every one hates and a young whore the judge was out with. From here it becomes a conflict between Mansell and a hard nosed cop Detective Raymond Cruz.

This book isn't all bad, and is worth reading if you have read most of Leonards more recent work and are wanting to take on everything the author has written. But I would suggest that you not start with this book. Try Get Shorty, or one of his from around 1990-95, and I would say that you will be much happier.

High Noon in Detroit, The Hunted and The Switch
I have never been disappointed with Elmore Leonard and though some books are better than others they are all fives. If one has read any of Leonard's older Westerns you can,in these three books, his morphing over to modern day crime from early westerns, that directly links the good and evil of crime, and the consistancy of psychopaths, past and present.

Good guy, bad guy, threatened heroine and a plot, that's it.

Leonard always creates an original and believable plot. His books are not mystery's they are the development of characters, portrayed in pitch perfect dialogue, that come together in believable random ways. You know roughly how they will end, good wins and bad loses, but the trip, with meandering and fascinating building block incidents, are a pleasure.

The psychological depth that he gives his characters always ring true.

Showdown with the Wildman
Clement Mansell is a killer without a conscious, and the guts to match. Is he going to blink? And if he does, the question is who's going to make him do it? Raymond Cruz, the cop who is nearly as crazy as he is? Carolyn Wilder, his attorney who is as hard as nails? or some one else? Each page is more intense than the one before.