In a fitted Box. Orange cloth binding with black and blue title. Title and man in an arch on the front board.

• F.B.A. provides an in-depth photographic presentation of this item to stimulate your feeling and touch. More traditional book descriptions are immediately available.

               A fantastic Folio Edition, a true collector’s edition.

‘A masterpiece’ Martin Amis

‘The coolest, hottest writer in America’ Chicago Tribune

A major Hollywood film starring John Travolta, GET SHORTY has also been adapted for TV with Chris O’Dowd and Ray Romano.

Miami loan shark Chili Palmer is ice-cool, whether he’s retrieving stolen property or collecting money for the mob. Chasing a bad debt leads him to the bright lights of Hollywood – and to a true story that would make a great movie. Soon he’s pitching to Harry Zimm, a B-grade horror flick producer trying to make a comeback.

As the lure of Tinseltown’s dream-makers and gorgeous wannabe starlets becomes increasingly hard to resist, Chili gets caught up in murder,revenge and romance. Will his killer movie ever get made, or will it just get him killed . . . ?

‘In Hollywood, home of movies, gorgeous women, players and fast operators – every move you make is a potential scene … Nerve-shattering suspense, crackling dialogue and scathing wit from ‘the hottest thriller writer in the US’ Time Magazine

‘One of the most hilarious and cynical Hollywood revenge novels ever written’ Playboy

‘Extremely funny, bursting with sustained passages of black comedy . . . a major American novel’ Guardian

Get Shorty is a 1990 novel by American novelist Elmore Leonard. In 1995, the novel was adapted into a film of the same name, and in 2017 it was adapted into a television series of the same name.

The story centers on Ernesto “Chili” Palmer, a small-time loan shark based in Miami. After a run-in with mobster Ray “Bones” Barboni, Chili goes to Las Vegas in pursuit of Leo Devoe, a dry cleaner who has scammed an airline out of $300,000 in life insurance by faking his death, as well as avoiding his $10,000 debt to Chili’s employers.

After relieving Leo of the money in Vegas, Chili gambles it all away. At the casino, he finds a more interesting assignment: the casino is looking to collect from Harry Zimm, a horror film producer based in Los Angeles. Chili, very interested in the movie business, heads for Los Angeles to make Zimm pay.

Chili sneaks into the house of actress Karen Flores, where Harry is staying, in the middle of the night. After he warns Harry to pay his Las Vegas markers, he explains that he has an idea for a movie. Harry is immediately taken in by Chili’s charm and his movie premise. For the movie’s plot, Chili recounts Leo’s story to Harry in the third person, as if it were a work of fiction. Karen recognizes the premise as a true story and identifies Chili as the unnamed shylock.

The next morning, Harry asks for Chili’s help in dealing with a movie script for Mr. Lovejoy he wants to buy from his writer’s widow, Doris Saffron, who wants $500,000 for it and he guaranteed a $200,000 investment from Bo Catlett, a local limo driver and drug dealer, to make another movie, Freaks. (Harry gambled Bo’s $200,000 away in the Vegas in hope of making the $500,000 he needed for Mr. Lovejoy). In a meeting with Bo, Harry and Chili tell them that their investment in Freaks is sound but they are making another movie first. Bo tells them to move the money into the new picture; Harry says he cannot since the new movie deal is “structured.”

Bo is involved in a Mexican drug deal that falls through. He has left the payment in a locker at the Los Angeles airport but the Colombian sent to receive the money, Yayo, does not feel safe unlocking the locker with so many DEA agents staked out nearby. Bo later meets Yayo at the limo garage and after Yayo threatens to tell the DEA who Bo is, Bo shoots him.

Bo soon offers the locker money to Harry as an investment and tells him to send Chili to get the money. Chili senses something wrong, signs out a nearby locker as a test and is taken for questioning by DEA agents. After the questioning, Chili seeks the interests of Michael Weir, a top-tier Hollywood actor to play the lead in “Mr. Lovejoy”.

Ray Barboni, after learning about Leo’s money from his wife, comes to Los Angeles looking for the money Chili collected from Leo, only to find the key to the locker from the failed drug deal in one of Chili’s pockets. Thinking Chili has stashed his cash in a locker, he goes to the airport and is busted by drug officials.

In a final showdown with Bo, Chili is held at gunpoint by Catlett. One of Catlett’s henchman, known as the Bear, arrives just in time to apprehend Catlett, and in the struggle for the gun, Catlett falls through the railing of his sun deck. As Chili recounts his story to Karen and Harry, it shares some comparisons with Mr. Lovejoy.

Elmore John Leonard Jr. (October 11, 1925 – August 20, 2013) was an American novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter. His earliest novels, published in the 1950s, were Westerns, but he went on to specialize in crime fiction and suspense thrillers, many of which have been adapted into motion pictures.

Among his best-known works are Get Shorty, Out of Sight, Swag, Hombre, Mr. Majestyk, and Rum Punch (adapted as the film Jackie Brown). Leonard’s writings include short stories that became the films 3:10 to Yuma and The Tall T, as well as the FX television series Justified.