In Get Shorty (1990), Chili Palmer was a Miami loan shark who ventured to the strange land of Los Angeles and stumbled into the movie business. Now, with two movies under his belt, he's looking for another big hit. Both Chili Palmer novels are stories about a guy who converts events in his own life into feature-film fodder, sort of writing a movie as he goes, turning fact into fiction. As good as Get Shorty was--and it was very good--its sequel is better. Chili's new quest for a box-office smash, which involves a beautiful young singer, several shady music-business insiders, and an assortment of villains, reaches a level of comic surrealism that its predecessor only approached. This time, Chili knows from the beginning that he's going to turn his life into a movie. The loan shark turned producer becomes a kind of puppet master, staging real-life events to see how they'd work in a screenplay, orchestrating scenes, manipulating people as though they were big-screen characters. He knows there are folks who want to kill him, but what a movie it will all make--if only he can survive to the fade-out. This is a funnier novel than Get Shorty, too, chock-full of entertainment-industry in-jokes, and with a liberal supply of Leonard's always engaging characters and music-to-the-ears dialogue. With the master's name on it, Be Cool will immediately pole-vault toward the top of most best-seller lists. This one deserves its success.