Comfort to the Enemy and Other Carl Webster Stories »

After 30 years writing westerns and crime novels, Elmore Leonard finally started to get somewhere. "Author Discovered After 23 Books," The New York Times said in 1983, referring to his Edgar Award-winning novel LaBrava. Since then, Leonard's tack-sharp dialogue and comic underworld characters have been drawing accolades and an ever growing base of fans.

The "Hot Kid" of the U.S. Marshals Service, Carl Webster maintains the law with a cool, showdown attitude. He's one of the richest creations in Elmore Leonard's half century of delivering the goods. From his appearances in the critically acclaimed novels The Hot Kid and Up in Honey's Room, Carl returns to lay down the law in a novella that originally appeared as a serial in the New York Times Sunday Magazine.

The title novella—plus two Carl Webster short stories—traces Carl's career from his run-in with 1930's gangsters to his investigation of a murder at a German POW camp in Oklahoma. This time it's Carl against war-seasoned Afrika Korps Nazis. With its pitch-perfect dialogue, compelling characters, and classic charm, Comfort to the Enemy is vintage Leonard.

Library Journal

Two linked short stories that provide a much-needed introduction to the title novella expand the legend of U.S. Marshall Carl Webster (The Hot Kid; Up in Honey's Room). The year is 1944, and Carl is back in his marshal uniform after recovering from an injury incurred while serving in the U.S. Navy. His assignment: to investigate the death of a German prisoner of war at Camp Deep Fork near his home in Oklahoma. Carl approaches the job patiently and methodically, displaying a maturity not readily apparent in his earlier "Hot Kid" years, yet he deals swiftly with a couple of paid gunmen when the time is right. A German POW who escapes and returns to camp at will, a beautiful prostitute who provides his motivation, a Jewish gangster who wants access to the POW camp, and a wannabe Hot Kid who is assigned to assist in the investigation test Carl's patience and his skills, providing both challenge and humor. VERDICT This volume is the logical next episode in the charmed life of one of Leonard's most famous characters, and Carl Webster fans will certainly clamor for this latest installment. [Oct. 11 marks Leonard's 85th birthday, and his 44th novel, Djibouti, also publishes this month.—Ed.]—Thomas L. Kilpatrick, formerly with Southern Illinois Univ., Carbondale