Reviews for Strong Hearts

The average rating for Strong Hearts based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-11-19 00:00:00 Elaina Skovira Comfort to the Enemy is a collection of two short stories and Comfort To The Enemy novella starring Carl Webster. The two short stories, "Showdown at Checotah" and "Louly and Pretty Boy" became parts of the novel, The Hot Kid. Deputy Marshal Carlos "Carl" Webster is one of my favourite characters written by Leonard. I have read The Hot Kid so the first two stories was old news but the novella of the title was worth my time. Carl is investigating a death in a POW Camp for German soldiers in Oklahoma. I like how it was a character study than crime novel, crime plot. The crime was solved like an afterthought. It dealt with many characters that were very believable as people for a novella. Also dealt with serious issue like the idea that German prisoners of war in US in 1944 might not be like the Nazi mass murderers as people assume. As usual Elmore Leonard wrote dialogue that was serious,quirky like few writers can, every minor character was dealt with as carefully, smoothly as major characters like the lead hero. I have read some of his 70s,80s,90s novels,stories and his writing in this collection, other 2000s books are his best writing, he is still in the top of his game. I cant say the same about many other great writers with long careers.

Review # 2 was written on 2010-09-28 00:00:00 Mark Houtchens 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.