Self-awareness is the driving factor of Get Shorty’s narrative, also, it is the impressionable aspect that intrigues and entertains its readers. Elmore Leonard’s trip through Los Angeles is not all about bright lights and fame, ironically it is rather the clamour for such successes and the deprived state that the landscape could often lead its citizens to that feeds this story, all emphasised through the revealing of social threads that shape and gate-keep this system and how it’s manipulated for their gain. While that may seem like a story that breeds and fosters despicable characters, Leonard maintains our sympathy through the peeling of their motivations, opening the rationales that allow them to be identifiable and worthy of our attention. There is a captured feeling of life’s improvised moments, a “one step at a time” mindset that eventuates towards something, whatever that something is we don’t know, but throughout we have an idea of what we want or hope it would be.