I really like Elmore Leonard, so it was difficult for me to decide how I felt about this book. It is a departure from other Leonard books I've read in that it leans heavily towards historical fiction. The humor is darker and drier than I'm used to seeing from the author, but the book is addictive in its own way. I wasn't prepared for the intense representations of bigotry in this book. I'm sure leaving issues of race out of the novel would have been a gross misrepresentation of the time period, but the reader should be aware that there is little aesthetic distance here.