It's a Shame He Wasn't a Wanted Felon so I Could Shoot Him He Resisted

Raylan Gibbons did not just return to our television screen yesterday for the new season of Justified, but he also saw his triumphant return to the bookshelves (or virtual bookstand as the brick and mortar versions are hard to find these days) in Raylan. For those unfamiliar, Justified is actually based on the Elmore Leonard short story Fire in the Hole where a cowboy hat wearing US Marshall is demoted back to his home country after a questionable shooting in Miami.

The characters may mostly be the same, Raylan does not play in the same timeline that Justified. Though the book does read as if the writers of the television series got a hold of an outline of the book and made it the basis of the second season, because both feature heavily a storyline about an evil coal company coming to town in the form of an attractive lady by the name of Carol (but with a different last name). But the surrogate Ma Bennett is now a guy by the name of Pervis Crowe but retains sons Coover and Dickie (and Dewey turns out to be his nephew).

And Elmore clearly was watching the television series because Loretta McCready makes a quick cameo as well as Wynonna who was just mentioned in the short story. And the Boyd and Ava relationship seems to be progressing much like it did in the early part of season two, but she only quickly shows up in one chapter and disappears. Missing in Raylan is Arlo who just gets a quick mention along with a little sister for Raylan who I do not remember ever getting mentioned on the show before (but for some reason whenever I was reading about Pervis I saw Arlo in my mind).

Naturally Raylan is tasked to hunt down some bad guys whenever he is not escorting Carol around. One case finds him hunting down some criminals who are taking kidneys out of people and then try to sell them back to the patient. More humorously is someone from Raylan’s past who devised a plan to get strippers to rob banks for him and stupidly makes a video tape for Raylan telling him he knows Raylan is coming for him and he will get Raylan first. Hopefully the Justified writing staff turn this plotline into an episode because I would love to see how the plot played out in living color.

With the themes similar, but outcomes different, it is a little hard for a Justified watcher to get into this book, but once you do, it is filled with everything you love about the series. And it may have been a while since he written about him but Elmore Leonard still has an amazing grasp on the character and Kentucky as a whole. The series inspired Leonard to start writing about Raylan Gibbons again and after reading Raylan, hopefully he has a couple more stories about the US Marshall in him.

Raylan gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.