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Leonard excels at this sort of corner-of-the-mouth satire. His research sometimes sticks out, but he has a perfect ear for punk talk, a hungry eye for sleaze and an eerie ability to get inside empty heads: "This ocean was different, the tourist believed, than the ocean up in New Jersey. Though it must be the same water because the oceans were all connected and the water would get different places." Madame Bovary on the boardwalk could not have said it better.