Killshot, his twenty-seventh novel, InElmore Leonard dramatizes the traumatic effect of weak law enforcement on innocentdeputies,indifferentthey also people. City police, sheriffs' and FBI men invariably are and insensitive; frequently are inefficient and bumbling.

The only completely sympathetic characters in the novel are Carmen and Wayne Colson, the couple whose lives are changed when they happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. That they manage to survive and prevail despite the authorities' incompetence and unprofessionalism is testimony to their own persistence, courage, and ingenuity.

Leonard aims critical barbs not only at law enforcement people, but also at the criminal justice system. Both of the novel's psychopathic villains have been in and out of prisons, but no matter how serious and how frequent their crimes, they make it back into society. Armand Degas and Richie Nix are not run-of-themill thugs, but cold-blooded murderers...