BANDITS

Few suspense writers have gone from underappreciated to overrated as quickly as Leonard has—and this thin, quirky, mildly involving heist-farce is a strong reminder of the weaknesses (in plot and character) that often go along with Leonard's zesty, visceral strengths. Jack Delaney—ex-con, former hotel thief, former male model—is now unhappily working for his brother-in-law, a New Orleans mortician who orders the reluctant Delaney to pick up the corpse of a young woman from a Louisiana leper colony. What Delaney discovers, however, is that the young woman he's picking up is neither a leper nor dead: she's Nicaraguan beauty Amelita, on the run—with help from gorgeous ex-nun Lucy Nichols—from a lecherous, homicidal contra colonel named Dagoberto Godoy. Soon, then, Delaney—bewitched by Lucy's comely idealism—is helping to hide Amelita from Godoy and a squad of creepy, CIA-connected henchmen. Furthermore, Delaney eagerly joins in when Lucy (who has witnessed Contra horrors) suggests that they steal the $2 million that Col. Godoy has been collecting from right-wing US industrialists—money destined to support contra terrorism (or perhaps Godoy's Miami retirement). To help in this heist from Godoy's New Orleans hotel, Delaney assembles a motley, diverting crew: elderly bank-robber Cullen, just paroled and desperate for sex; ex-cop Roy, a Stone Age thug; ex-girlfriend Helene; and—the unlikeliest ally—Godoy's own resident hit man, a weirdly naive Nicaraguan Indian. But, despite a final flurry of bloodshed, the digression-heavy plot never generates much tension or black-comic momentum. And Delaney's radicalization—from selfish apathy to gentle idealism—introduces an out-of-place note of hollow sentimentality. Still, scene by scene, Leonard does offer darkly ironic dialogue, grimly comic violence, and shrewdly detailed locales—from the mortician's back room to a seedy old folks' home. So, though in some ways inferior to similar concoctions by Ross Thomas and Donald E. Westlake, this lesser Leonard effort should provide his new-won fans with sturdy—if not compelling—entertainment.