Elmore Lenard died exactly one year ago, on August 20, 2013, the day after Mirko Kovač, so, as far as I remember, he was not followed by too many obituaries in Yugoslavia. The cultural sections of the local media are limited anyway, and they can hardly cover two deaths in just a few days, and both literary deaths. In the year after Lenard's death, however, his last novel was published in Belgrade: Givens Justice (Laguna; translated from English by Nikola Pajvančić). The novel is originally called Raylan, named after the main character. For some reason, in the translation of the title, the main character's name was replaced by his last name. The main character's name is Raylen Givens. Leonard's fans will remember that this is a hero who has already appeared in one of his stories and in two novels. More importantly, the said story served as a template for a television series Justified. Eventually, Leonard used some motifs from the series as a template for the novel Givens Justice. It really turns out to be a variation on the concept that UNHCR brought into vogue after the last Balkan wars: two-way return.
WITHOUT KIDNEYS: This is how the novel begins: "Raylen Givens was supposed to serve a federal warrant on a certain marijuana dealer named Angel Arenas." Age forty-seven, born US, but Latino from head to toe.” Givens finds him in a motel room, alive but barely. ("Angel Arenas' head was lying on the curved end of the tub, his eyes were closed, his body stretched out naked in a tub filled almost to the top with ice and pink water." ) When they see two quick-closed wounds on Arenas' body, Raylen's colleague recalls the famous urban legends: "It's like that old story." A man wakes up, his kidney is missing. He has no idea who took it from him. You hear it from time to time, but no one has proof that it really happened." Angel Arenas will end up in intensive care, in critical condition, but will survive. Hemodialysis is waiting for him and it is keeping him alive while he waits for a kidney. He will provide Raylen with information that will allow him to begin an investigation. You should immediately say yes Givens Justice it is neither a "whodunnit" nor a "police procedural", but essentially a darkly humorous three-part portrait of the main character.
TRIPTYCH: Although in most accounts of this novel, the case of "organ theft" is emphasized, it cannot be said that it is the main theme of this book. How could it be when Raylene Givens solves the case in the first half of the novel. That part is not even the funnest, although there are some very funny motives. One of them is the masks that the pair of "organ thieves" wear before attacking their victim; these are the masks of Barack and Michelle Obama. However, in the first half of the novel, in and around the "organ theft" case, we will meet several secondary characters who will play a significant role in the second half of the book. It is the characters, even completely episodic ones, that is, theirs, as one would say schematically, characterization, with great dialogues, Leonard's strongest literary virtue. U Givens Justice, with the exception of the title character, the most impressive characters are actually women: from the policewoman Rachel Brooks, through the nurse Leila and Carol Conlan from the mining company, all the way to the poker player Jackie. Even when they are "villains", Leonard's heroines are never devoid of charm.
IN HIS CENTURY: Although born in 1925, i.e. in the first quarter of the twentieth century, Elmore Leonard, judging not only by Givens Justice, in the twenty-first he by no means felt like "in another century". This novel is so easy to read, often with a smile, sometimes with a loud laugh, that it is actually difficult to explain what its secret is. The dialogues are lively, lively, one would almost say Tarantino, if one did not know that Leonard influenced Tarantino rather than Tarantino influenced Leonard, although in that sense, at least when it comes to this novel, it makes sense to talk about a two-way return. There are scenes and subplots that seem like they were written by a young Hollywood B-production screenwriter high on some mutated hashish. The plot is fast and the language is juicy. In this sense, it is worth praising the good translation and, what is even more important, the affected "register" of the translator Nikola Pajvančić. And Raylen Givens himself, in this novel, Elmore Leonard will lead to the edge of hell and back, and then to the edge of heaven: due to flirting with one woman, he almost loses his kidneys, and flirting with another leads him to find "the sweet secret of life". .
