In Elmore Leonard's The Hunted … Ed Rosen, head of a million-dollar mortgage company, is blackmailed by the Justice Department into testifying against two mobsters on indictment for murder; but both beat the rap, and Rosen leaves hurriedly for Israel…. [His] identity is accidentally revealed, and three hitmen arrive on the plane that is also bringing his lawyer with $200,000 severance pay from the company. On his side Rosen has a pretty Israeli girl and Davis, a Marine guard at the United States Embassy, with two Purple Hearts and a Silver Star from Vietnam, and only twenty-seven days to do in the corps. His professional instincts as an infantry-man are aroused by the situation; he takes command, and after a few inconclusive skirmishes the book comes to a climax with a siege and pitched battle in the desert near Eilat. Brilliantly written, and extremely funny at times, with some good oddball characters (such as Willard Mims, the gung-ho Marine who keeps a cache of souvenir Claymore mines in his foot-locker), The Hunted is exciting enough to warrant, for once, the adjective "unputdownable".
A review of "The Hunted," in The Times Literary Supplement (© Times Newspapers Ltd. (London) 1978; reproduced from The Times Literary Supplement by permission), No. 3972, May 19, 1978, p. 545.
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