A Protegee Of Jack Hamlin's And Other Stories (Large Print Edition) Book

Thanks to the publisher and goodreads for the advanced reading copy.

Comfort to the Enemy is a collection of two short stories and the eponymous novella starring Carl Webster. The two short stories, "Showdown at Checotah" and "Louly and Pretty Boy" also appear in the book, The Hot Kid.

I've known about Elmore Leonard, having seen the movies Get Shorty and Out of Sight and having loved the tv show Justified. But I never got around to reading his work until now.

As expected, Leonard's got style and every character is just cool, cool, cool. Carl Webster reminds me of Raylan Givens of a different era.

I preferred the two short stories over the novella, as I like the cowboy marshal hunting down or meeting bank robbers more so than solving a murder revolving around Nazis. A lot of the mystery solving also involved longer-than-usual and therefore less-spunky dialogue, which diluted what was supposed to be Leonard's forte.

I'm not sure if this collection is meant to satiate existing fans of Carl Webster or to entice new readers to read the Carl Webster novels The Hot Kid and Up in Honey's Room. As a new reader, I'd say this book successfully piqued my interest in Leonard's other books, even if the novella contained herein was less than perfect.