Juice

by Robert Wright Campbell

“Juice is a big time crime novel with a brilliant kaleidoscope of characters and a story that pulses with energy...full of good-time crime and a pleasure to read, told in a remarkably easy style. Robert Campbell has his own sound; he’s an awfully good writer.” — Elmore Leonard Campbell's Los Angeles is a city where everybody does business and the business is usury, shylocking, loan sharking...juice. Alfonso "Puffy" Pachoulo is a juiceman, a guy who's willing to lend you a bone or more. Problem is, he expects it back...soon... with interest. There are two basic reasons juicemen stay in need and greed. Maybe you got a sick mother, but most likely you got a habit, a consuming disease called gambling. That's Billy Ray's problem; he's a would-be actor with a taxicab and bad luck who loses money faster than he can borrow it from his wife. Hotshot lawyer Allan Nadeau all so shows all the symptoms. Despite his luxurious house in Brentwood and his Lamborghini, he has cash flow problems. His dollars tend to slip out of his hands or up his beautiful wife's nose. Then there's Panama Heath, a vice cop who watches the juice flow, destroying all the lives and hopes in its path. Panama's carrying a torch for Billy Ray's wife, to the disgust of his smart-mouthed Chicana partner, Missy. When a glamour-boy politician named Fitzsimmons puts together a task force to send everyone to jail and himself to a lofty public office, the cops and the juicemen start getting in each other's way. The collisions are sometimes shocking and sometimes hilarious, but always vividly entertaining.

Genres: Fiction, Crime

299 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

A screenwriter who turned to writing novels. Many of his earlier books were published as by R. Wright Campbell but later works were credited to Robert W. Campbell or simply Robert Campbell. He also published one book as F.G. Clinton. For more, see his obituary in the Los Angeles Times.

Reviews

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terrific Novel

Juice is a terrific book and features the humor Campbell showed us in his Jimmy Flannery series, but here his humor has a harder, nastier, more biting edge. Juice is a novel about the gamblers, goniffs, juicemen, loansharks, and other denizens of the Hollywood jungle.

Going back and forth between the banter of a few cynical police officers, the loanshark and his muscle, and the sad string of losers who get in hock to this monster Puffy Pachoulo and end up broken in body and spirit, and desperate.

It is filled with terrific characters like Hey Hey Billy Ray, a cabdriver, wanna-be actor, whose got the disease real bad and by disease I mean the gambling bug. And he's got it so bad he'll hit up his wife and aging mother for their last times and put it all on a nag to win - never just to place or show. Of course, Billy Ray is in hock to the juiceman but can't stop gambling.

The lawyer Nadeau is in hock because of his cash flow issues that he has to maintain his lifestyle and to maintain his drop-dead gorgeous wife Helene, who has her own cash flow problems with her nose candy habit.

Puffy is a great character and his two muscle men are great foils, especially Sam's Man, who carts his dog Sam everywhere. Thus, the name.

Even the officers are colorful including Panama Heath, so named because of his hat and his partner Monk.

What makes this book is the great sense of humor in it, the great cynical lines that just flow off the pages, and just full out great storytelling.

[Derek Rutherford · Rating 4 out of 5]

You can't go wrong with Robert Campbell - whether it's his Whistler, Jake Hatch, or Jimmy Flannery novels. Here we have a standalone one, and it's a great read. Pretty violent, but funny in places, too. Neat characters and a very easy, fast-paced, read. I knocked off a star as it doesn't quite get beneath anything - it's like a skim across the surface of the dark side of LA - and because we don't get beneath the surface of the characters, the settings, the plot it all feels wonderful but superficial, and somehow not real. Still well worth your time, though!

[Lawrence FitzGerald · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit Damon Runyonesque. Quaint, shallow, intended to be shocking. Picked up at the 60% mark and turned out to be a decent read.

[Ryan Hornish · Rating 4 out of 5]

Slow but good, I was hoping for a bigger show at the ending but it was still enjoyable.

[Shayna Marchione · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book reads like a mob movie or an episode of the sopranos.

[William Marantz]

The kind of book Elmore Leonard tries to write - but doesn't quite pull off.

[Jason Hillenburg · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the best crime novels of its era. Campbell does it all brushstroking vivid characters to life and giving us a sense of place worthy of Chandler. Woefully underrated and now largely forgotten.