[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….

[As] we move through swingers' bars, swanky country clubs, sumptuous estates, 60-foot yachts, we meet the supporting players, each made vivid and distinct through a single gesture, a bit of costume, a few lines of dialogue. Mr. Leonard's skills as a caricaturist and satirist are very impressive. (p. 11)

Whenever the heavies, bit players and walk-ons are performing, this novel is irresistible.

The novel, unfortunately, also has a hero and a heroine. Stick is the familiar 20-minute yegg, wary, wily, living by his wits, reputed to be laconic but garrulous in fact, touchy about his honor, quick to rescue a pretty barmaid being bothered by a drunk…. The heroine, Kyle McLaren, a super-successful investment counselor, exists mainly to magnify Stick, to show him off to us. One night this penniless and 42-year-old ex-con is bedded down by three beautiful, well-off and experienced women. There is no reason why Mr. Leonard should not enjoy himself through his hero, but the scenes between Stick and his women make for slack reading. The long bull sessions between Stick and Kyle on this and that, on life in general, are awful. They make you wonder whether Mr. Leonard's many admiring critics have not begun to make him take himself, rather than his writing, seriously.

But these scenes don't last forever (it only seems that way)—about 40 pages out of 300. For the rest, when Mr. Leonard is observing, satirizing, plotting, working up suspense, thickening the air with menace, discharging it in lightning flashes of violence, exposing the black holes behind the parts people play—when he tends to business, that is, he gives us as much serious fun per word as anyone around. (p. 41)