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Feb 26, 2011

Toby rated it:

Get Shorty was a great film; Be Cool was not. Leonard's novel was a better followup than the resulting Travolta-Thurman flick, and my impressions of it as a sequel are based on having seen Get Shorty but not having read it.

Be Cool is standard Elmore Leonard -- 300 pages of crime hijinks, sex, guns, and one badass being more badass than the other badasses and saying badass things while he's at it. Into this mix toss an indictment of the record industry -- the slimy promoters, the merc More...

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Oct 14, 2010

Thomas rated it:

Be Cool

Be Cool
By; Elmore Leonard
pp. 384
June 2002
25.60
9780060082154
Harper Collins

Be Cool was a smart, funny, and exiting novel. It starts out with Chili Palmer, the former Miami loneshark, and his lunch with a friend named Tommy Athens from his days in Brooklyn. When Chili goes up to go to the bathroom, he comes back and watches Tommy gets shot before his own eyes. Chili gets qu More...

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Oct 03, 2010

wally rated it:

dunno what the first elmore leonard story is that i read. maybe this one, within the last few years. this is another where i'd seen the name used by others in their stories, maybe a character from their story read leonard, so i had to see what all the hullabaloo was about.

leonard writes good stories...you got your plot, your characters, you action/dialogue, point a to point b, maybe a twist or two, but that's life, right? chili palmer is a hoot. linda moon. i like his characterizat More...

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Nov 01, 2010

Nancy rated it:

Of late, I've been unlucky in love. I've been disengaged, annoyed, indifferent and just plain restless. My romance with reading was in jeopardy and I needed to do something about it. It seemed like every book I picked up in the past few weeks was either over-written, dreary, boring or something . . .

If only all life's problems were as simple to resolve as this one: pick up an Elmore Leonard book and life becomes vibrant and technicolour again.

I don't know if Be Cool is n More...

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Nov 30, 2008

Lori rated it:

I didn't realize when picking this up (another book sale cheapo) that it was the sequel to Get Shorty, which I don't think I've ever read or seen. (I kept being bothered by the idea of Travolta as Chili Palmer, though that must be the role he plays.) Even as I figured it out, though, I decided to read it anyway. It certainly looked like it could stand on its own.

And for the most part, it did. Fast plot, fast characters, fast action, fast read.

Which is basically the proble More...

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Jan 02, 2011

Sarah rated it:

I liked this book, but I didn't love it as much as other Leonard books. It's set in Hollywood, and although the main character Chili Palmer is out-of-place (having missed both movies, I managed to picture a middle-aged retrosexual and not John Travolta for Chili), the rest of the characters are mostly pretty terrible Hollywood stereotype people. I didn't want to know them better and I didn't care if they succeeded or failed to achieve their superficial desires. Except Eliot: him I loved. Fortu More...

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Nov 23, 2008

Tom rated it:

Here's my review system--I score on four categories and average them together for the number of stars. The four categories are: character development (are the characters deep and complex, plot (is it interesting), voice (is the narration smooth and engaging) and cliche level (is it predictable.)

Character development: 5 stars-- Leonard is the best for bringing characters to life

Plot: 2 stars-- I'm sorry I just didn't care

Voice: 5 stars-- The best--it feel like More...

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Sep 05, 2011

Daniel rated it:

I love the move Get Shorty. I love Travolta's cadence and I think it has one of the best soundtracks. I've never seen Be Cool, having heard it wasn't very good, so I didn't know anything about his book except how to visualize and hear Chili Palmer and what kind of music to listen to as I read.

Be Cool turned out to be a very fun story about the making of a story. I felt very familiar; this is the same Chili Palmer I remember. My only complaint is that the book switches styles half More...

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Sep 16, 2009

Steven rated it:

I had high expectations for Elmore Leonard - perhaps this wasn't the best introduction. Didn't like the non-grammatical voice his characters would pick up and drop over the course of the story.
The music industry plot line and character development on Linda Moon was good and kept interest, but the song and rap lyrics? Please.
Definitely dates because of the pop culture references, but not too much.
By the end of it, I was ready to be done. He's too smooth, his characters telegraph t More...

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Aug 08, 2008

Martin rated it:

I realized after rating "Be Cool" that I have rated all the Elmore Leonard books I have read three stars. This may be unfair; I absolutely LOVE Elmore Leonard. I guess since I devour his books so quickly and they go down so easily they tend to not make much of an impact or be terribly memorable. Yet, they are just great books. Pitch-perfect, hilarious, exciting, gritty, always delicious. I love Elmore Leonard, so much I can’t find enough food metaphors to describe him and his writ More...

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Aug 22, 2009

Nekouken rated it:

Elmore Leonard's Be Cool was the long-awaited sequel to Get Shorty, but as eager as I was to read it, after I was finished, I was not only disappointed but I realized why it was a terrible idea in the first place. In my review of GS, I described Chili Palmer as a neanderthal at a fencing match. In BC, he's the same neanderthal, except he's learned to fence just in time to go bowling. At the time the book starts, Chili is part of the Hollywood machine; his mobby directness is gone in favor of More...

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Dec 10, 2008

James rated it:

i've realized that i have a huge problem with books that try to fictionalize the music industry, and it's that they always seem so fake. being a complete and total music nerd, whenever i read a book or story featuring a fictional label, band, or whatever it may be, it kind of makes my skin crawl because it feels so put on. it also highlights the difficulty in coming up with decent names, whether they be for band or label.

but that's just a problem that I have -- it's not the only pr More...

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Jan 01, 2012

Frederick rated it:

Chili Palmer gets into the record business after his great success making movies. He becomes the manager for a Texas-born group that sings "acid rock with a twang". Along the way he meets the russian mob, a high placed movie producer, a pimp, and his bodyguard who is a very large gay Samoan with a penchant for throwing people off of balconies.Read by Ron McClarty who does a great job with the various different voices.

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Jul 25, 2011

Amy rated it:

I'd put it in 'summer beach read' category. Again Chili P is working on a movie idea and everyone he comes across (and manipulates?) is a potential character or scene. But everything is a scene, no action happens, Chili usually is just describing (talking, talking, talking) to someone what happened. I won't say the ending, but it summed up how I felt about the book - no real story.

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Jan 31, 2011

Mike rated it:

BE COOL isn't. It is a book about stupid, selfish or obnoxious people (some characters are all three) doing stupid, selfish, or obnoxious things (sometimes all three). While I disliked some characters more than others, I never really liked anyone enough to want them to succeed. The style is strong enough that I read to the end, then I wondered why. This is not a world I want to revisit.

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Nov 14, 2008

melydia rated it:

The opening scene, where Chili Palmer is having lunch with a man who ends up getting shot by a hitman, is pretty good. But don't expect the story to be about that crime. There are vague murmurings about possible connections with the Russian mafia but by and large the scene is nothing more than a hook to get you into the story, then forgotten about soon after. This book is a lot like Get Shorty except that it's about a singer instead of a laundromat owner. The whole "let's describe what's re More...

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Jan 27, 2010

Bibliophile rated it:

Be Cool is the sequel to Elmore Leonard’s Get Shorty (in which Chili Palmer, a quondam enforcer for a loanshark, ended up producing a film based mostly on his own life.) Unfortunately, the formula doesn’t work that well a second time around with the setting transferred to the music industry. Chili – the outsider in the first book – is now an insider and I didn’t find any of the characters as engaging or memorable as those of the first book.

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Aug 30, 2011

Susan rated it:

Another Elmore Leonard novel - pure Leonard. Great characters - of course you can see John Travolta as a perfectly-cast Chili. Enjoyed the book. Leonard has a way of developing characters that I really like. Each could be someone you know (sort of), but just a little off. Chili gets into the music business in Be Cool. Of course, he knows nothing about it, but becomes quite a force promoting a wanna-be singer just so he can develop a movie plot. Would recommend for light reading.

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Jul 11, 2011

Joe rated it:

Elmore Leonard - author
4/4 stars

The follow-up to Leonard's "Get Shorty" once again follows the shylock-cum-film producer Chili Palmer as he navigates the dangerous, murky waters of the L.A. recording industry. Recommended for fans of crime novels, Hollywood storytelling and clever writing.

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Sep 12, 2010

Chris rated it:

This is a sequel to Get Shorty that should never have been written. The dialogue lacks the snap of the typical Elmore Leonard novel, and the music industry is just not as interesting as Hollywood as a backdrop. Leonard couldn't write a truly bad novel if he tried, but this is dull.

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Sep 09, 2011

Jeff rated it:

A fair book, but Leonard has done much better. The wise-guy dialogue was there but I didn't like any of the characters, not even Linda. I knew almost from the beginning how Raji was going to get his. I did enjoy the proposed title for his third move, "Get Stupid".

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Aug 22, 2009

Peter rated it:

Elmore Leonard's wildly successful Novel/Movie Get Shorty was an attractive mix of gangsters and the movie industry...a marvelous conciet on Leonard's part. Be Cool was the sequel and threw in the music industry. Great story, marvelous (what else) dialogue.

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Aug 27, 2010

Mark rated it:

Great Hollywood music/movie industry tale with Leonard's inimitable cast of characters: wiseguys turned indie record promoters, rappers, West Texas rockers, a huge gay Samoan bodyguard, Russian mobsters, a Spice Girls cover band, and our guy Chili Palmer. Frequently hilarious.

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Apr 19, 2009

Roberta rated it:

A fitting sequel to Get Shorty. I read somewhere that Leonard had John Travolta in mind when he created the character of Chili Palmer. The two movies showed it was a good characterization.

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Jan 02, 2009

Carolyn rated it:

An easy, amusing read, but something of a time-waster as there were no lessons to be learned, no personal insight to be shared, nothing memorable. Soooo not my scene.

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Aug 18, 2011

Mary Ellen rated it:

Nobody creates characters and tells stories like Elmore Leonard. This book is full of great characters and is told in a very unique - very Elmore Leonard - kind of way

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Feb 05, 2011

Adam rated it:

PLEASE do not judge this book based on the horrific movie made from it, starring john travolta. this was a pleasure of a read, one of leonard's best non-westerns.

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May 11, 2011

Edward rated it:

Sequel to Get Shorty and just not up to the original. Chili Palmer is still himself, but the story and the other characters can't compare.

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Jan 20, 2011

David rated it:

I had heard about Elmore Leonard, but this book was too cutesy, too hip, and I didn't relate to the motivations of the characters at all.

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May 31, 2011

Jack rated it:

Return of Chili Palmer, adding music business to his schemes, as with many sequels it doesn't do as well as the original.

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