Rum Punch is the book Jackie Brown is based on. As usual, Elmore Leonard, delivers interesting characters—criminals, cops, or innocent bystanders, which, if you're new to Elmore Leonard's work, are rare—and throws a bunch of money (which needs adjusting for inflation) between them. This is what happens.

I don't know how I forgot that this book is the basis for the brilliant movie Jackie Brown. Elmore Leonard had the most powerful and humorous and interesting use of language, and every story he tells is a thousand times more interesting because of it. This is such a wonderful story -- the characters are so complicated, and always surprise me. Jackie is a flight attendant who ends up over her head, mixed up with some seriously bad guys, and the resolution is so clever and satisfying.
I was so excited reading this that I was trying to talk about it with the guy at the local independent bookstore and he didn't know about Jzackie Brown, so I am probably donating a few books to my favorite bookseller.

Elmore Leonard at the top of his game. I am a longtime fan of Elmore "Dutch" Leonard going way back to a battered paperback copy of Cat Chaser that I bought for fifty cents back in the mid-1980s; long before the appearance of Raylan Givens, who would arguably become Leonard's best-known character, but well after Leonard's classic Western novels. So, needless to say, I am not exactly an unbiased critic when it comes to the Dickens of Detroit. In my opinion he's one of the best there ever was or ever will be.

I read Rum Punch many years ago, not too long after it was first published in the early 1990s. As far as I can recall this was my third time reading the novel although I've seen Jackie Brown (1997), Quentin Tarantino's film adaptation of the book, many times. I found that this time around my memory of the film meshed somewhat with my memory of the book... It gave me a better understanding of the plot and the characters and helped me appreciate some of the nuances I had missed (or forgotten) in previous readings and viewings. Everything just seemed to click. I loved it as much or more than the first time I ever picked it up.

BOTTOM LINE: Great stuff. If you're only familiar with the film, which Leonard himself praised as one of the best adaptations of his work, then you should definitely read the book. Because this is where it all started and you've been missing out.

Elmore Leonard's Rum Punch is the basis for Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown. It does not get more classic than Elmore Leonard when it comes to crime fiction and Rum Punch is no exception. Vivid characters and an exciting plot.