Mr. Majestyk audiobook

This is a great early crime novel (1974) from Elmore Leonard. The protagonist is a Vietnam vet named Vincent Majestyk who is growing melons on a hundred and sixty acres in the rural southwest. He's struggling to get his crop in on time and is close to the edge of losing it all if he doesn't. All he wants out of life is to be left alone to get the job done.To do so, he needs a crew to pick the melons for him. Like most other growers, he depends on a crew of experienced migrant pickers. But then a local wannabe badass named Bobby Kopas tries to tell Majestyk that he can only use workers that Kopas supplies--basically a bunch of winos who wouldn't know a melon from a basketball. An altercation ensues in which Majestyk punches out Kopas and winds up in jail for assault.Sharing the cell is a sociopathic hit man named Frank Renda. While they and other prisoners are being transported to court, a group of Renda's cronies attacks the bus and frees him. Majestyk takes advantage of the confusion to run away as well. When Majestyk then attempts to foil Renda's escape, he makes a bitter enemy. From that point on, Renda is obsessed with the idea of killing Mr. Majestyk and insists that he has to do it himself. Majestyk is obsessed with the task of getting his damned melons to market and doesn't have time for this crap. The two will duel through the rest of the novel and, as is always the case in a book like this, only one can get his wish.Like most of Leonard's early work, this is a taut, spare novel. The characters are well-imagined and the plot moves along at just the right pace. A very satisfying read from one of the real masters of the genre.

I picked this up at a Border's Going-out-of-Business sale for $1.79, so I knew nothing about it other than it was by dialogue master Elmore Leonard. So to my surprise, there wasn't a lot of dialogue in the story, as the main character is cut from the same cloth as John Rambo in First Blood. However, the lack of dialogue did not keep me from enjoying the story one bit; I devoured all 150 pages of it in a single night's reading. I think it helped that I pictured the main character as Charlie Bronson in my mind's eye. He plays Vincent Majestyk in the film adaptation, which -- although I've never seen it -- makes sense as it seems written for him.

MR. MAJESTYK is Elmore Leonard's novelization of his original screenplay, both from 1974, and offers a one-time-only window into the master's approach to hackwork: he can do it in function, but he can't in form because he's simply too talented and too uch of a pro to phone it in. Yet, at 138 pages, there's nothing in the book that isn't in the screenplay, and it's clear Leonard, who was about to publish SWAG — the first of his true contemporary crime classics — wasn't interested in expanding on the characters or the story. But as it turns out, 138 pages is all he needs to give you compelling characters and nonstop conflict in a story in which everything makes sense. The only thing missing from what would later turn out to be a signature Leonard novel is a more leisurely unpacking of Southwest melon grower Vincent Majestyk's past. In a twice-as-long novel, we'd meet friends, colleagues and enemies from Majestyk's past, and a simple story of revenge would turn into a complicated series of scam-driven set pieces. But one of Leonard's many gifts is giving the reader a little — just enough — to make more of out of it in their head, thus giving them a fully engaged experience. All Leonard gives us is that Majestyk, a decade before, was some kind of special badass in pre-Vietnam War Cambodia, and has some medals to go along with many lethal skills. We know he once had a wife and has a seven-year-old daughter he doesn't see, but we have no idea how he went from being a soldier to being a melon farmer, how he got the money, why he chose that life, etc. I would have liked to have known these things, but Leonard, in not providing them, essentially says: "You fill in those blanks." Which means he's showing me respect as reader, giving me room to engage with his creation, and I respect his respect. I happened to re-read MR. MAJESTYK after re-reading David Morrell's FIRST BLOOD (1971), and a thought that would have never come to me had I not read those novels back-to-back came to me: Majestyk is basically John Rambo with about 30 percent more ability to make his way in the post-Vietnam world. Rambo drifts, apparently penniless despite his awards and successes, afraid of a place that has no place for him, Majestyk somehow finds his place while being an extreme embodiment of what would come to be the archetypal Leonard hero: quiet when others are loud, unresponsive to blather, quick to act, smarter than his apparent station in life would suggest, possessing of a sly sense of humor for those who bother to take the time to know him a little, and otherwise content to live his life and let others misjudge him based on what they see. All complete with a badass past, of course. Yet, he doesn't really fit in, and so people wonder and worry about him, usually too much for their own good, and trouble ensues. Trouble that only Majestyk (or Rambo) is equipped to handle.The story, of course, is that, in trying to keep others from keeping him from hiring enough skilled workers to bring his melon crop to market before, Majestyk lands in jail and runs afoul of mob-connected contract killer Frank Renda, whose sense of superiority is so scorched by Majestyk's manhandling of him that he foolishly puts everything aside in his quest for vengeance. That sets up a strong FIRST BLOOD parallel: Frank Renda misjudges Majestyk until it's too late because all he sees is a melon farmer who momentarily, and implausibly, got the better of him, and thus is easy pickings for a stone pro like Renda. That's when we learn that because Majestyk doesn't react in any way Renda can predict, based on his past with his kind of predators and prey, he acts blindly, and winds up walking into a trap Majestyk has laid for him. From FIRST BLOOD, as Col. Sam Trautman, Rambo's trainer, tells Will Teasle, the Kentucky deputy bent on murderous vengeance against the hippie "kid" who got the better of he and his men: "Did you ever watch a chess match between an amateur and a pro? The amateur wins more pieces. Because the pro is used to playing with people who have a reason and pattern for every move, and here the amateur is shifting pieces all over the board, not really knowing what he’s up to, just trying to do the best he can with the little he understands. Well, the professional becomes so confused trying to see a nonexistent pattern and allow for it, that in no time he’s behind. In your case, you were in blind flight, and Rambo was behind you trying to anticipate what somebody like himself would do for protection. He would have expected you to lie in wait for him, try to ambush him, and that would have slowed him down until he understood, but then it would have been too late.”In MR. MAJESTYK, Renda's hired guns make these observations: “You know what the trouble is?” the driver said. “The guy, the farmer, he doesn’t know what he’s doing. He shouldn’t even still be around.” “That’s it,” the one in the back seat said. “If he knew anything he’d know enough not to be here. It’s like some clown never been in the ring before. He’s so clumsy, does so many wrong things, you can’t hit the son of a bitch.”I don't kow if Leonard and Morrell were friends, or simply mutual admirers, even though it seems reasonable to think so as contemporaries and towering successes, but I'd bet anything that Leonard read FIRST BLOOD and it was lingering in his head to some extent as he created MR. MAJESTYK. That said, I want to knowhow and why John Rambo ended up a penniless drifter and Vincent Majestyk ended up owning a lot of farmable acreage and operating a business and fitting into post-Vietnam society well enough to get by. That MR. MAJESTYK isn't interested in answering that question is no fault of his; he's got a hardboiled story of righteous vengeance and fatal hubris to tell, and he doesn't have the time or interest in anything else. In a later Leonard novel, he would have given us that much, and it would have made MR. MAJESTYK that much more interesting. But not necessarily better. It delivers the goods in its 138 pages, and there's nothing wrong with that.

What a fantastic book. I remember the movie with Charles Bronson fondly & that seemed to hold very true. It's been years since I've seen it, so I'm sure some details slipped through the cracks, but I could see all the actors as the fantastic reader laid it out for me. Great action, wonderful finish, especially Majestyk's last line. "You were right. He was trying to kill me."Perfect! Few can write such a well focused adventure as Leonard.

At his best, Elmore Leonard is every bit as good as Westlake. This book actually reminded me of Donald Westlake's writing, especially the Parker series.Recommened

An oldie from Elmore Leonard, the King of Modern Noir...melon farmer, former spec op operator, is threatened by an organized crime hit man...great characters and fun plot...so much fun, I resurrected the old Charles Bronson movie and boy did they get the roles assigned correctly...spot on!

I picked this one up because it appeared on James Lee Burke's pleasantly idiosyncratic list of the all-time best mysteries, which was published recently in Parade magazine. Says Burke: "It’s one of the best portrayals of professional criminals I have ever read and a beautiful accomplishment in terms of dialogue and style." Mr. Majestyk is a noirish novel of the Average Guy school: melon farmer Vincent Majestyk cares about nothing other than saving his crop, but then he runs afoul of a local mobster and discovers that harvest time becomes more complicated when somebody wants to kill you. Tight, fast-paced, recommended.

My first Elmore Leonard novel, and I picked a good one. But, from all the great reviews of his writing, I imagine I could have picked any of them.One of the main attractions here (and in all of his novels presumably) is the crisp, straight-forward prose. There are absolutely no wasted words here. Leonard pens a tight, 188 page story that keeps your attention the whole way. I didn’t want to put this down, and I really didn’t have to because the reading was easy. That’s the sign of a great writer. I’ll be reading more of his 45 novels.

Elmore Leonard was a master of the concise but powerful; famously in his dialogue, but also with his storytelling in general. This slimline novel is an intriguing and potent read that spans the border between Leonard's western tales (Three-Ten to Yuma, etc) and his later urban-based crime novels. Both chronologically and thematically. Originally published back in 1974 (I read a 1986 Penguin version, pictured), and turned into a film starring Charles Bronson, MR MAJESTYK is an action-packed and compelling tale of a war veteran who wants to lead a simple life farming melons in 1970s Arizona, but gets thrown in jail when a wannabe tough guy tries to muscle in on Majestyk's melon business. When he then gets caught up in the jail break of a mob hitman, Majestyk just wants to retreat to his farm and bring in his melon crop. Which is tougher to do when the law, local thugs, and the mob itself may also be gunning for you. There is definitely a western vibe to this crime novel, a man with a past trying to lead a simple life on the land, being harassed by local thugs and the law, trying to just do the right thing and live his life but also willing to take matters into his own hands when it comes down to it. Reluctantly, perhaps, but more than capably. I really enjoyed this read, devouring it in a night and a morning while travelling. A shorter, relatively simple tale that's very well told, and leaves you with memories of fascinating characters and plenty of action. It perhaps doesn't have quite the dialogue snap of Leonard's later books for which he became very famous, but the signs are there and overall this is a lesser-known gem among Leonard's oeuvre. Leonard takes us into the hard-bitten and dusty life of the pickers and growers living the agricultural bowl of the southwest of the US. The back-breaking work and sweating under the sun to make a living. Or a subsistence. There's an honourable independence to Majestyk, who is engaging and easy to follow along with even if he doesn't say very much. He's a tough guy who doesn't try to act like one - and doesn't care much for those that do. With little brushwork, Leonard has created quite a portrait, with plenty of depth for the reader to absorb without relying on lots of introspection. With very few words, Leonard makes his characters, settings, and this tale come to vivid life.

Simple and satisfying. There's no fat in this story, just a series of action sequences held together by some thin story and character, but it sure is fun.Personally, this story is right in my wheelhouse. While there's plenty of "urban thrillers", finding a good "rural thriller" can be a challenge. This book fits in that category.My Dad grew melons, so admittedly, for me, any story about a badass melon farmer could do very little wrong.Great read for a short trip through the desert.

This is Elmore Leonard at his best. Vincent Majestyk is the quintessential example of a man who only wants to live his life quietly, doing an honest day's work and to be left alone. He's got a crop of melons on a modest farm in Arizona that need to be harvested and brought to the broker. Time is of the essence and Majestyk must rely on day-laborers, some of whom know little to nothing about picking melons, to get his crop to market. Problem is, he refuses to bend to the local mob's will regarding who to hire, and when confronted, Vincent offers the expected "attitude adjustment" to the hood representing the mob's interest. Well, this begins the chain-reaction that will ultimately lead to Majestyk having to confront the mob boss, Renda, who is hell-bent on killing him. After Vincent's foreman and close friend had his legs broken and the rest of his hired help run off, Vincent finds himself alone and outnumbered. Well, not quite alone, for there is a tough, attractive woman who had previously come into his sphere, working his fields with some friends from Yuma before everything blew up. She and Vincent share an immediate attraction and it turns out that she doesn't scare easily. The story moves along incredibly rapidly, with action and excitement aplenty. Majestyk served in Vietnam (the story was written in 1974), and is quite adept at guerrilla warfare, making him an able adversary once he decides to go on the offensive instead of waiting for Renda to destroy his life at his convenience. What transpires is every bit as satisfying as any good old Western, where the gunfighter who had wanted to hang up his Colt is forced once again to defend himself and face down the black-hatted foes. The only downside to this novel is how quickly it ends, leaving the reader wanting more.