Monday, January 23, 2012
Books Raylan shoots blanks compared to FX's "Justified"
Posted by Curt Holman @Curt_Holman on Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 10:55 AM
- William Morrow
- Author Elmore Leonard and Timothy Olyphant as his creation
“Justified” takes as its jumping-off point Leonard’s 2001 e-book novella “Fire in the Hole.” Leonard began writing Raylan after the show got off the ground, sharing the manuscript-in-progress with its producers to put new ideas in the mix for the show’s second season. Raylan seems to take place in some kind of alternate-universe version of “Justified’s” Kentucky, as some scenes match each other almost word-for-word in the book and the show, while the characters are drastically different. In pretty much every respect, “Justified” is better.
Raylan Givens maintains his status as a Stetson-wearing, quick-drawing lawman dispensing justice in the 21st century. Raylan features the larcenous brothers Dickie and Coover (pungently played by Jeremy Davies and Brad William Henke on the show), and even includes the scene when Coover throws a dead rat at Raylan’s car during a tense front-yard conversation. The dimwitted but dangerous sons of crimelord Mags Bennett on the show, the book conceives them as Dickie and Coover Crowe, and their father Pervis is the Kentucky kingpin.
The novel also offers coal executive Carol Conlan as the counterpart to the show’s Carol Johnson, who leads a fractious town hall meeting about the mining company’s intentions. On the TV episode “The Spoil,” the meeting includes a false assassination attempt, the briefest of debates between Raylan and Boyd and a fiery speech by Mags about the coal company misdeeds: “The spoil” is supposedly a term that refers to toxic coal mine run-off. The book’s meeting doesn’t have nearly the same dramatic punch.
Written as one continuous narrative, Raylan really amounts to three interconnected novellas. Leonard clearly enjoys going on a tear through the hyperbolic setting of crime in the backwoods and mid-size cities of the U.S. South. The show, however, balances soft-spoken, charismatic performances with outlandish events, like the way crazy-as-a-fox crook Boyd Crowder shot a church with a rocket launcher on the pilot episode. Raylan’s outlaws may well turn up on the show some day, but in the book they seem much crazier and less believable than Leonard’s usual fare.
The dust jacket announces “The bad guys are mostly gals this time around,” which gives an idea of the book’s simplistic ideas about women and interest in kinky sex. One of the villains, known as “Layla The Dragon Lady,” turns out to be a surgical nurse who teams with Dickie and Coover to raise money from other people’s organs. The book’s Carol Conlan proves far more bloodthirsty and unlikeable than her TV alter ego. Raylan’s colleague Rachel and ex-wife Winona only make cameo appearances. Jackie Nevada makes the most positive impression as a 23 year-old professional poker player, but the book’s details about 21st century cardsharps seem out of place.
Leonard’s strengths have always rested on mood and character rather than intricate plotting. Readers get to hang out with small-time parole officers, bounty hunters and criminal lowlifes as they shoot the shit. In Raylan, one of his rogues recalls a crime this way: “We laughin in our rubber masks cause it was funny. I always felt, you don’t have a good time doin crime, you may as well find a job.” But Raylan builds to outlandish, melodramatic showdowns — one involving nudity, the other a cross-dressing gun thug — that fly in the face of the author’s cheerfully grubby realism in his books.
“Justified” may have an unfair advantage over Raylan, in that a well-acted TV show just starting its third season can flesh out characters and settings in ways that a breezy, 260-page book just can’t. Maybe the right actress could sell Layla the Dragon Lady as part of “Justified’s” world, even though she seems preposterous on the page. Leonard’s loyal readers will probably enjoy Raylan as a high-spirited lesser effort and won't notice the absence of Mags and the like, but fans of “Justified” will be let down. There’s a chance, though, that the show’s creative team can spin some of the book’s straw into gold.
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