[Elmore Leonard] is never more entertaining than when one of his villains is stealing a scene. They are inspired hams, these bad actors, so empty inside that they only become themselves when they are playing a part, milking it for all it's worth. There is therefore something desperate about their zest, which nevertheless releases our own. (Think of Laurence Olivier playing Richard III; think of Marlon Brando playing the bounty hunter in "The Missouri Breaks"; think of Orson Welles playing anything.) They are treacherous and tricky, smart enough to outsmart themselves, driven, audacious and outrageous, capable of anything, paranoid-cunning and casually vicious—and rousing fun. Mr. Leonard's villains upstage his heroes, who are sticks, and his heroines, who are as modish and blank as the dummies in Bloomingdale's windows.
The chief villain of "Stick" (a book named after its hero) is Charles Lindsay Gorman III, known on the street as Chucky Buck. He is a wholesale distributor of controlled substances like grass, hash and coke. He is rich, but he is not happy…. Bucky knows that he is due to be either busted by the narcs or whacked by the wise guys. What he wants is a safe investment for all this cash he has hidden around his top-floor Fort Lauderdale condominium, looking to retire, get down off the hook….
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