Rum Punch

Rum Punch is a crime novel by Elmore Leonard, published in 1992 and set in West Palm Beach and Miami. It was adapted for the cinema as Jackie Brown.

Jackie Burke is forty-four years old and works for a small airline, which makes it easy enough to carry illegal cash into the United States from Jamaica for Ordell Robbie, a gunrunner with ambitions. Federal agents arrest her on one of those trips and offer the usual choice between prison and cooperation as bait in their attempt to catch Ordell. Ordell, having heard about the arrest, applies his own pressure, wanting her to mislead the investigators long enough for him to bring in the rest of the money he intends to retire on. Jackie is caught between two arrangements that would ruin her either way, and she begins looking for a third option with the help of Max Cherry, a bail bondsman who would like to leave the business.

Leonard writes crime with a great deal of dialogue and very little moralising, and his characters tend to be more competent than the institutions around them.