Watts has often been compared to Elmore Leonard, and his latest crime thriller (after 1996's Steal Away) begs to be cast along the same lines as Out of Sight. Teddy Clyde, the charming upscale Philadelphia car thief, is instantly recognizable as a George Clooney type, and who else but Jennifer Lopez could play Natalie, the investigative reporter "with a great rear end" who is working undercover as a waitress in a mobbed-up strip club? Of course, smart Teddy is the only one who recognizes her in her skimpy disguise. And while he's scoping out her assets, she's musing that "he had a look like you'd see in the movies. Not Disney. More like, what? A John Grisham film. Sociable on the outside but something hidden behind the eyes." Watts, who has been writing screenplays of late, loads his story with empty characters waiting to be filled with real actors—the short-fused, dim-witted, foul-mouthed Mafia underboss who arranges a hit on his superior without considering the consequences; the height-challenged, ruthless federal prosecutor who treats his own staff worse than he does the mobsters he's chasing; the wise old Jewish master criminal using the local ruffians for a big deal of his own. Watts is a clean, glib writer who can drop in a cutting line with ease—he refers to the nasty prosecutor as "a Rudy Giuliani, but without the class"—but readers hoping for a diverting couple of hours might be better off waiting for the film version. (Oct. 13)
