Up in Honey's Room

Written by Elmore Leonard

Narrated by Arliss Howard

The Odd Thingabout Walter Schoen, German born but now running a butcher shop in Detroit, he's a dead ringer for Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS and the Gestapo. Honey Deal, Walter's American wife, doesn't know that Walter is a member of a spy ring and gives shelter to escaped German POWs. But she's tired of telling him jokes he doesn't understand—it's time for a divorce.

Along comes Carl Webster, the Hot Kid of the Marshals Service. He's looking for Jurgen Schrenk. Carl's pretty sure Walter's involved with keeping Schrenk hidden so he gets to know Honey, hoping she'll lead him to Walter. Honey likes the hot kid marshal and doesn't much care that he's married. But all Carl wants is to get Jurgen without getting shot. Next, Carl meets Vera Mezwa, the Ukrainian head of the spy ring, and her lover Bohdan, with a sly way of killing. And then there's Otto—the Waffen-SS major who runs away with a nice Jewish girl. It's Elmore Leonard's world—gritty, funny, and full of surprises.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperAudio
• Release date: May 8, 2007
• ISBN: 9780061449994

Elmore Leonard

Elmore Leonard wrote more than forty books during his long career, including the bestsellers Raylan, Tishomingo Blues, Be Cool, Get Shorty, and Rum Punch, as well as the acclaimed collection When the Women Come Out to Dance, which was a New York Times Notable Book. Many of his books have been made into movies, including Get Shorty and Out of Sight. The short story "Fire in the Hole," and three books, including Raylan, were the basis for the FX hit show Justified. Leonard received the Lifetime Achievement Award from PEN USA and the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America. He died in 2013.

Reviews for Up in Honey's Room

[bjkelley · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Sequel to "The Hot Kid" and even better. Wish this was a movie, I could envision all the scenes as I read it. Elmore Leonard at the top of his game.

[nx74defiant · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An odd book. Kevin is one of the main characters for the first three chapters, than receives another assignment and basically disappears. Otto goes off and is not mentioned again until near the end. Nothing really happens until the very end.

[davewilde-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It is a story told
primarily through dialogue and character development. I thought it
was great stuff, but I caution that it is not for everyone. Honey Deal is the "real doll," a femme fatale that thought it would be interesting to
marry Walter Shoen, a German butcher who sympathizes with the
Nazis. After a year of being bored silly by his German manners, she
walks out on him. Five years later, the war is in full swing and federal Marshal Carl Webster is hunting two Nazi POWs that escaped from a
penitentiary in Oklahoma. Carl is the real deal too, an honest-to-godcowboy from the west who is intent on getting his man and who keeps his hands off the goods even when Honey turns around topless in an
effort to make him. Carl thinks Honey's ex husband is harboring the
fugitives and enlists her help in talking to her ex. The Nazis are a crazy group, including Walter who believes he is Heinreich Himmler's twin
separated at birth, another one who thinks he wants to be a cowboy in a rodeo, and of course the Romanian Countess who has a transvestite
butler. It is a crazy tale and once you get into it, there's no turning
back. Leonard wrote this to be realistic and it has that feel. You feel as
if you are in war-era Detroit and the characters are something else,
especially Honey Deal. I recommend reading this one,

[dcavin-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

My first Leonard. Enjoyable read a bit confusing at times as the story shifted a bit. But overall good. Will try Leonard again.

[mccin68 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What do you get when you throw together a German spy ring, a famed Nazi hunter, a crazed cross-dressing double agent, a German expat longing to make a name for himself and a Hudson's department store sales girl? A fabulous read. I have never read Leonard before and but I thoroughly enjoyed this book. the characters are over the top, in your face and yet they all fall together into a fun, wild, fast-paced story.Being born and raised just north of Detroit I loved seeing the city used as a backdrop-it was fun to hear of places I know, have frequented, woven into such a great plot. I have already begun stocking my bookshelves with more Leonard-thanks for the fun read

[tulikangaroo · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

While I enjoyed listening to Up in Honey's Room, I had a hard time following the cacophony of characters - consisting of US Marshals, Nazi POWs, and Russian spies - in a story where there was a lot going on but not much happened. This was my first Elmore Leonard novel, and the word on the street is that it's not his best. Someday I'll try another one.

[debavp · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This was not as enjoyable a read as the first in the series The Hot Kid. Right off the bat, I have zero interest in the Nazis, Hitler, the German SS , etc. So that's a major hurdle to overcome and I blocked it as best I could. I couldn't help but feel that Leonard let the reader down a bit with Carl this time around. Yeah, he still is walking a thin line between good and evil, but I think it's more of a phoned in performance, not nearly as riveting as it could have been. As a follow up, it was a let down.

[ttaisi5editor · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I usually like Elmore Leonard. But not this one! "Up In Honey's Room" is one of those rare books I won't finish, because it's just not very good - not enough fun to make the effort, and fun is the whole reason to read this author.

[jonathon3hodge · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Good hard-boiled subway reading with a great lead character

[damselfly_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

(This review is for the audio book.)A clueless German butcher, a US federal marshal, a gorgeous blonde with no clear role (it's her room that's important), and a pair of Boris and Natasha-like spies form the core of this entertaining World War II tale. Oh, and throw in the KKK and a pair of likable German POWs. The butcher and spies are up to something, the marshal must find out what, but it doesn't really matter; it's the eccentric crew and their shenanigans that engage.The humor in the book is enhanced by Arliss Howard, who narrates the audio version and does a great job with the heavy Southern, German, and Eastern European accents. Recommended.

[kcarp_17 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I'll admit--I picked this one accidentally when in some crazy brain wiring I confused Leonard and Walter Mosley. I've read and enjoyed some Leonard, but this one was something of a disappointment. For one thing, there was never any truly captivating characters (yes, Honey was 'a free spirit'--who cares?) and no real sense of urgency ever developed. Just throwing in Nazis does not a page-turner make!

[dougwood57 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

'Up in Honey's Room' details the federal pursuit of a couple of escaped German prisoners-of-war late in WWII. The story plops down in the midst of a pack of oddball pro-Nazis, some German and some American. Leonard brings many of his standard elements to 'Up in Honey's Room'. Deputy US Marshal Carl Webster returns as the outwardly stoic hero figure, a real man's man, but underneath also a real human being. There's the criminal who's not nearly as smart as he thinks and does something incredibly stupid and impulsive. There's the attractive, bold, funny, and slightly dangerous woman and a cast of other memorable characters. Leonard also displays his ear for language as he plays with accents and regional variations. So far, so good. Up in Honey's Room goes badly off track with a couple of jaw-droppingly implausible conversations that lead to equally implausible relationships and decisions. Federal agents spilling the beans to Honey within 5 minutes of meeting her. A transvestite amidst the Nazi cabal barely causes a raised eyebrow. Recommended only for die-hard fans of Elmore Leonard (of which I have been one for a long time).

[tasker_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'll admit it up front - I'm an Elmore Leonerd fan -spending twenty years in the Detroit area doesn't hurt either when the story mentions familiar locations such as the downtown Hudson's, McNichols (Six Mile), Belle Isle and the Ford Rouge. Forget the story and the flowery descriptions of the sky or water, characters and dialogue allowed me to breeze through this book and not make it feel like work or a trip to the dentist.

[davidabrams · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Rat-a-Tat-Tat That Falls FlatIf you're going to read an Elmore Leonard novel, some words of advice. Get in. Sit down. Hang on. Shut up. Don't ask where you're going or how you'll get there. You'll arrive before you know it.Leonard is a master at literature-in-transit. By the time you turn to page 1, most of his stories are already careening along with guns a-blazing—whether that's from the saddle of a horse in his early westerns, or the mean streets of Detroit, or from the back seat of a DeSoto tire-squealing around a corner and machine-gunning (rat-a-tat-tat) federal agents during Prohibition, as we find in his recent novel The Hot Kid.The author, who cut his teeth in the twilight of the pulp era, doesn't slow down for the reader—he expects us to make a running leap for the open door and get in, sit down, etc. His emphatic, declarative sentences make it easy for us to keep tumbling forward through the pages. We might not grasp everything and the cavalcade of characters might start to blur our eyes, but Leonard's sheer exuberance of language (both inter- and intra-sentence) make everything compulsively readable, front to back. We don't even have to care about the characters; Leonard does and that's all that matters. He loves these flawed, offbeat characters of his. Words lick against their bodies in cool sentences like: "He heard his name called and turned to see a young guy in black holding a big heavy show-off nickel-plate automatic against his leg, the shoulders of his suit wide, zooty, the pants pegged at his light-tan shoes." Elmore Leonard is the kind of writer who knows when a word like "zooty" will fit and when it will not and for that we love him.That kind of charitable forgiveness will carry readers a long way into his newest novel Up in Honey's Room, which turns out to be a rather disappointing, fair-to-middling entry in Leonard's long line of crackling-good yarns. Honey is neither great, nor mediocre. If it was a movie, I'd say, "Wait for it to come out on DVD."The letdown in Leonard's newest novel is amplified by the fact that The Hot Kid (to which this is a sequel of sorts) was a full-immersion pleasure, soaking readers in the sights, smells and sounds of 1930s Oklahoma where U.S. marshal Carl Webster tracks down bootleggers and bank robbers. Barreling through the plot with the determination of Elliot Ness, Carl is a wholesomely appealing character. Smart, funny, and carrying around an over-pumped ego (his trademark line is "If I have to pull my weapon, I'll shoot to kill"), Carl is one of those characters you can't take your eyes off of, even when Leonard is filling up the page with a crowd of thugs, dames and lawmen.Some of that verve, vim and vigor is missing from Up in Honey's Room. Carl's still here, but he's turned into a glass of Coke left out overnight: flat and no bubbles. The one character who really stands out from these pages is a particularly weird, lurid Ukrainian hit man named Bohdan Kravchenko, a trigger-happy cross-dresser with a Buster Brown haircut.It's usually futile to try and describe an Elmore Leonard plot. It's like listing the ingredients of sausage—there are so many different things packed in there, but all you really care about is how it tastes. Up in Honey's Room is set in 1944 Detroit where Carl has tracked down two German POWs who have escaped from a camp in Oklahoma. The pair are hiding out at a meat-processing farm run by Walter Schoen who is a dead ringer for Heinrich Himmler. Walter's ex-wife is Honey Deal (as in "a honey of a deal") and likes to walk around her apartment topless when Carl shows up to question her about Walter's German friends. She's got "bedroom eyes and that lower lip waiting there for him to bite." Leonard also throws in a spy ring, a plot to assassinate Franklin Delano Roosevelt, ribald jokes, and over-consumption of booze and cigarettes.That's the sausage, but it's Leonard's smart, fast, and funny writing which makes the mouth water. As always, dialogue remains his forte. His characters speak like they were chewing firecrackers. And that's almost enough to make you forgive the book's other faults. Almost.