Leonard, Elmore

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Elmore Leonard

Personal

Born October 11, 1925, in New Orleans, LA; son of Elmore John (an automotive executive) and Flora Amelia (Rive) Leonard; married Beverly Cline, July 30, 1949 (divorced May 24, 1977); married Joan Shepard, September 15, 1979 (died January 13, 1993); married Christine Kent, August 19, 1993; children: (first marriage) Jane Jones, Peter, Christopher, William, Katherine Dudley. Education: University of Detroit, Ph.B., 1950. Religion: Roman Catholic.

Addresses

Home—Birmingham, MI. Office—c/o Michael Siegel and Associates, 8929 Rosewood Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90048.

Career

Writer, television program creator, executive consultant, and producer since 1967. Campbell-Ewald advertising agency, Detroit, MI, 1950-61; writer of industrial and educational films, 1961-63; director, Elmore Leonard Advertising Company, 1963-66. Military service: U.S. Naval Reserve, 1943-46.

Member

Writers Guild of America, West, Mystery Writers of America, Western Writers of America, Authors League of America, Authors Guild.

Awards, Honors

Hombre was named one of the twenty-five best western novels of all time, Western Writers of America, 1977; Edgar Allan Poe Award nomination, Mystery Writers of America, best original paperback novel, 1978, for The Switch; Edgar Allan Poe Award nomination, Mystery Writers of America, best novel, 1981, for Split Images; Edgar Allan Poe Award, Mystery Writers of America, best novel, 1983, for La Brava; Literary Lions Award, New York Public Library, 1989; North American Hammett Prize for best crime book of the year, International Association of Crime Writers, 1991, for Maximum Bob; Grand Master Award, Mystery Writers of America, 1992, for "individuals who, by a lifetime of achievement, have proved themselves preeminent in the craft of the mystery and dedicated to the advancement of the genre"; Doctor of Humane Letters, Florida Atlantic University, 1996, University of Detroit Mercy, 1997, and University of Michigan, 2000.

Writings

WESTERN NOVELS

The Bounty Hunters, Houghton (Boston, MA), 1953, reprinted, Bantam (New York, NY), 1985.

The Law at Randado, Houghton (Boston, MA), 1955, reprinted, Bantam (New York, NY), 1985.

Escape from 5 Shadows, Houghton (Boston, MA), 1956, reprinted, Bantam (New York, NY), 1985.

Last Stand at Saber River, Dell (New York, NY), 1957, reprinted, Bantam (New York, NY), 1985, published as Lawless River, R. Hale (London, England), 1959, published as Stand on the Saber, Corgi (London, England), 1960.

Hombre, Ballantine (New York, NY), 1961, reprinted, 1984.

Valdez Is Coming, Gold Medal (New York, NY), 1970.

Forty Lashes Less One, Bantam (New York, NY), 1972.

Gunsights, Bantam (New York, NY), 1979.

CRIME AND MYSTERY NOVELS

The Big Bounce, Gold Medal (New York, NY), 1969, revised edition, Armchair Detective (New York, NY), 1989.

The Moonshine War (also see below), Doubleday (New York, NY), 1969, reprinted, Dell (New York, NY), 1988.

Mr. Majestyk (also see below), Delacorte (New York, NY), 1974.

Fifty-two Pickup, Delacorte (New York, NY), 1974.

Swag (also see below), Delacorte (New York, NY), 1976, published as Ryan's Rules, Dell (New York, NY), 1976.

Unknown Man, No. 89, Delacorte (New York, NY), 1977.

The Hunted (also see below), Dell (New York, NY), 1977.

The Switch, Bantam (New York, NY), 1978.

City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit (also see below), Arbor House (New York, NY), 1980.

Gold Coast (also see below), Bantam (New York, NY), 1980, revised edition, 1985.

Split Images (also see below), Arbor House (New York, NY), 1981.

Cat Chaser (also see below), Arbor House (New York, NY), 1982.

Stick (also see below), Arbor House (New York, NY), 1983.

LaBrava (also see below), Arbor House (New York, NY), 1983.

Glitz, Arbor House (New York, NY), 1985.

Bandits, Arbor House (New York, NY), 1987.

Touch, Arbor House (New York, NY), 1987.

Freaky Deaky, Morrow (New York, NY), 1988.

Killshot, Morrow (New York, NY), 1989.

Get Shorty, Delacorte (New York, NY), 1990.

Maximum Bob, Delacorte (New York, NY), 1991.

Rum Punch, Delacorte (New York, NY), 1992.

Pronto, Delacorte (New York, NY), 1993.

Riding the Rap, Delacorte (New York, NY), 1995.

Out of Sight, Delacorte (New York, NY), 1996.

Cuba Libre, Delacorte (New York, NY), 1998.

Be Cool, Delacorte (New York, NY), 1999.

Pagan Babies, Delacorte (New York, NY), 2000.

Tishomingo Blues, Morrow (New York, NY), 2002.

Mr. Paradise, Morrow (New York, NY) 2004.

OMNIBUS VOLUMES

Elmore Leonard's Dutch Treat (contains The Hunted, Swag, and Mr. Majestyk), introduction by George F. Will, Arbor House (New York, NY), 1985.

Elmore Leonard's Double Dutch Treat (contains City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit, The Moonshine War, and Gold Coast), introduction by Bob Greene, Arbor House (New York, NY), 1986.

Three Complete Novels (contains LaBrava, Cat Chaser, and Split Images), Wings Books (New York, NY), 1992.

The Tonto Woman and Other Western Stories, Delacorte (New York, NY), 1998.

Elmore Leonard's Western Roundup #1 (contains The Bounty Hunters, Forty Lashes Less One, and Gunsights), Delta (New York, NY), 1998.

Elmore Leonard's Western Roundup #2 (contains Escape from Five Shadows, Last Stand at Saber River, and The Law at Randado), Delta (New York, NY), 1998.

Elmore Leonard's Western Roundup #3 (contains Valdez Is Coming and Hombre), Delta (New York, NY), 1999.

SCREENPLAYS

The Moonshine War (based on Leonard's novel of the same title), Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1970.

Joe Kidd, Universal, 1972.

Mr. Majestyk (based on Leonard's novel of the same title), United Artists, 1974.

High Noon, Part 2: The Return of Will Kane, Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), 1980.

(With Joseph C. Stinson) Stick (based on Leonard's novel of the same title), Universal, 1985.

(With Jon Steppling) 52 Pick-Up (based on Leonard's novel of the same title), Cannon Group, 1986.

(With Fred Walton) The Rosary Murders (based on the novel by William X. Kienzle), New Line Cinema, 1987.

Desperado, National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC), 1988.

(With Joe Borrelli) Cat Chaser (based on Leonard's novel of the same title), Viacom, 1989.

(With Quentin Tarantino) Jackie Brown (based on Leonard's novel Rum Punch), Miramax, 1997.

OTHER

(Contributor) Dennis Wholey, editor, The Courage to Change: Personal Conversations about Alcoholism, Houghton (Boston, MA), 1984.

Notebooks, Lord John (Northridge, CA), 1990.

(Contributor) Carl Hiaasen, editor, Naked Came the Manatee: A Novel, Putnam (New York, NY), 1996.

When the Women Come Out to Dance: Stories, Morrow (New York, NY), 2002.

A Coyote's in the House (children's book), Morrow (New York, NY), 2004.

Also contributor of about thirty short stories and novelettes to Argosy, Dime Western, Saturday Evening Post, Zane Grey's Western Magazine, and other publications during the 1950s; author of filmscripts for Encyclopedia Britannica Films, including Settlement of the Mississippi Valley, Boy of Spain, Frontier Boy, and Julius Caesar, and of a recruiting film for the Franciscans.

Adaptations

"3:10 to Yuma" was adapted for film by Halsted Welles and released by Columbia, 1957; "The Tall T" was adapted for film by Burt Kennedy and released by Columbia, 1957; Hombre was adapted for film by Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank and released by Twentieth Century-Fox, 1967; The Big Bounce was adapted for film by Robert Dozier and released by Warner Bros., 1969, remade and released by Warner Bros., 2004; Valdez Is Coming was adapted for film by Roland Kibbee and David Rayfiel and released by United Artists, 1971; Fifty-Two Pick-Up was adapted for film by Max Jack and released as The Ambassador (also known as The Peacemaker) by Cannon, 1984; Glitz was filmed for television by NBC, 1988; Cat Chaser was adapted for film by Alan Sharp and James Borrelli, 1989, and released by LIVE Home Video, 1991; The Law at Randado was adapted for film and released as Border Shootout by Turner Home Entertainment, 1990; Split Images was adapted as a television movie, 1992; Get Shorty was adapted for film by Scott Frank and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/United Artists in 1995; Pronto was adapted for a television movie and broadcast by Showtime, 1996; Touch was adapted for film by Paul Schrader and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/United Artists in 1997; Last Stand at Saber River was adapted for a television movie and broadcast by TNT, 1997; Rum Punch was adapted for film by Quentin Tarantino and released as Jackie Brown, Miramax, 1997; Gold Coast was adapted as a television movie, Showtime, 1997; Out of Sight was adapted as a film, Universal, 1998; Maximum Bob was adapted as a television series by ABC in 1998; Out of Sight, directed by Steven Soderbergh, screenplay written by Scott Frank, was filmed by Universal, 1998; Karen Sisco (based on characters from Out of Sight) was adapted as a television series by ABC, 2003; Be Cool was adapted as a film, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 2004.

Sidelights

Elmore Leonard has been called the greatest living writer of crime fiction. His novels have been compared to the works of the acknowledged masters of the genre, Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. Critics praise Leonard's uncanny ear for dialogue, and many claim that his best fiction, steeped in the recklessness and violence of criminal America, offers significant commentary on contemporary life. It took thirty years of hard work, however, and the publication of more than twenty novels, before Leonard achieved the recognition that has since become commonplace. His first books were Westerns, which he wrote not out of literary ambition, but as a potentially lucrative form of entertainment. Motivated by the waning interest in Westerns, Leonard took up the subject of crime. His audience grew, and his books are now regularly on best-seller lists. With several film adaptations to his credit, he has become that rare, marketable author whose work transcends the supposed limits of popular fiction. Leonard has branched out in unexpected ways, publishing his first children's book, A Coyote's in the House, in 2004. "Elmore Leonard may only write crime stories," observed Times Literary Supplement reviewer David Papineau, "but he writes rings around most authors with loftier ambitions."

Leonard was born October 11, 1925, in New Orleans, Louisiana, a city he would revisit in fiction. Early in his childhood, Leonard's family relocated to Detroit, Michigan. His interest in writing was sparked while he was in the fifth grade. Inspired by the novel All Quiet on the Western Front, Leonard wrote and staged a short play set during the First World War. He continued to write throughout his school years, contributing stories to the school newspaper while a student at University of Detroit High. Shortly after graduating from high school, Leonard joined the U.S. Navy and served in the South Pacific during the Second World War. At the end of the war in 1946, he returned to Michigan, enrolled at the University of Detroit, and began work at an advertising agency. After completing his degree, Leonard continued in advertising and made his first serious attempts at fiction. "I'd get up early, write, then go crank out zingy copy for Chevrolet trucks," Leonard recalled for Time magazine reviewer J. D. Reed.

Influenced by Hemingway

In the early 1950s, Leonard once explained, he studiously read the novels of Ernest Hemingway. Admiring the author's restrained style, Leonard made up his mind to develop a "kind of lean, deadpan delivery" in his own writing. He experimented with this style by writing Western novels because he "liked Western movies a lot." His first fiction publication, a short novel titled "Apache Agent," sold to Argosy magazine for $90. By the end of the 1950s Leonard had published five novels and roughly thirty stories, most in magazines like Dime Western. Two of his works, the novel 3:10 to Yuma, and a short story, "The Tall T," were adapted for film. This marked the beginning of Leonard's ongoing relationship with Hollywood, where producers continue to capitalize on the action, suspense, and quirky characters in his fiction.

Despite his success, Leonard abandoned fiction altogether when the Western craze subsided in the early 1960s. During this lull he worked as a freelance copywriter for several clients in the auto industry and, eventually, opened his own advertising agency. Leonard also wrote educational film scripts for Encyclopedia Britannica, including a documentary on Julius Caesar, and several informational film scripts for area companies. "I was busy making a living," he once stated. "That was all kind of exciting. But I still couldn't wait, really, for an opportunity to have enough money at one time to get back into a book." Leonard got that chance when the film rights to his last Western novel, Hombre, sold for $10,000. Two years later he was able to leave advertising and start writing fiction full time.

Leonard's return to fiction in the late 1960s marked the beginning of his career as a crime writer. His first effort, The Big Bounce, was rejected by eighty-four publishers before being accepted by Gold Medal. Questioning the wisdom of his move to crime fiction, Leonard wrote two more Westerns, Valdez Is Coming and Forty Lashes Less One. Again, Hollywood played a pivotal role in his career: film rights to The Big Bounce sold for $50,000, giving him the resources and incentive to continue working in his new genre. Leonard produced roughly one book annually for the next several years. By the late 1970s he was an established author of crime fiction. The Switch and Split Images were nominated for the Edgar Allen Poe Award. Leonard's novel Stick, featuring a car thief caught on the wrong side of the mob, received considerable critical attention. It was also adapted as a film starring and directed by Burt Reynolds. Even though Leonard later said the film version was inaccurate, the movie's popularity boosted interest in his work.

Gains Critical Favor with LaBrava

LaBrava, Leonard's next novel, brought him to the foreground of crime fiction. Set in Miami, a favorite Leonard location, the novel tracks the misadventures of Joseph LaBrava, a former IRS and FBI agent who has retired to pursue a career as a freelance photographer. LaBrava's new lifestyle is interrupted when he photographs a murder. While eluding the murderers, he becomes entangled with an ex-movie star. When her plan to defraud the mob goes awry, LaBrava regains his lawman's conscience and makes sure justice is done. Applauding the novel's engrossing plot and convincing dialogue, reviewers hailed Leonard as a master craftsman. LaBrava earned the Edgar Allen Poe Award, which had eluded Leonard on two previous occasions, when the Mystery Writers of America selected it as the best book of 1983.

Critics praised the polished style in LaBrava, and they were startled by Leonard's grasp of the criminal mentality. His understanding was built on research conducted in police stations, bars, and courtrooms in and around Detroit. For years, Leonard had been in the habit of inconspicuously listening to the conversations of cops and crooks to absorb the peculiarities of their speech and vocabulary. Similarly, he employed a researcher to document the cities, through photographs and interviews, where his novels are set. Following LaBrava, Leonard applied this technique to Atlantic City, the setting of his first best-seller, Glitz.

After a Miami police officer, Vincent, is wounded outside his local supermarket, he travels to Puerto Rico to recuperate. In Puerto Rico he is seen by the homicidal Teddy Magyk, a man he had once arrested. From there the action relocates to Atlantic City, where Vincent and Magyk pursue one another through a carnival of gangsters and gamblers. Glitz drew rave reviews from several critics. AuthorStephen King, for instance, writing in New York Times Book Review, compared Leonard to Charles Dickens, whose depictions of the underworld in nineteenth-century London are considered masterpieces of English literature.

In the late 1980s Leonard produced four novels that were all well received but failed to earn the same high marks as Glitz. Departing from his typical locales, Leonard set Get Shorty in Hollywood. The plot turns on the pursuits of Chili Davis, a loan shark from Miami who travels to Las Vegas to collect a debt from a man who has faked his own death. While in Las Vegas, Chili agrees to help out an old friend by collecting money owed to his friend by Harry Zimm, a former producer of horror films. Once Chili arrives in Hollywood, he discovers that Zimm is also indebted to Bo Catlett, one of the novel's villains. Finding himself caught between Zimm and Catlett, Chili successfully manages a complicated series of double-crosses. All the while, Chili has been bitten by the Hollywood bug, and he attempts to sell his story—that is, the story of a loan shark who comes to Hollywood. To his great amusement, Chili realizes the power brokers of the film industry are not much different from the crooks he has worked for all his life.

"It would be easy to assume that what Mr. Leonard is saying here is that the con men are right at home in the movie business," wrote Nora Ephron in the New York Times Book Review, "but it seems to me he's making an even wittier point, which is that even tough guys want to be in the movies." Commenting on Leonard's familiarity with Hollywood in Los Angeles Times Book Review, Charles Champlin wrote that Get Shorty is "at heart a portrait of the community, less angry than [Nathanael West's] Day of the Locusts, but not less devastating in its tour of the industry's soiled follies and the gaminess beneath the grandeurs." Publishers Weekly reviewer Sybil Steinberg announced that "Chili and his story are Leonard's best yet." Get Shorty was released as a major motion picture, starring John Travolta in the role of Chili.

With Maximum Bob, Leonard returned to the familiar territory of South Florida. The title character, Maximum Bob Gibbs, is a racist circuit court judge feared throughout the county for his unnecessarily stiff sentences. Bob is trying to rid himself of his wife, Leanne, who was traumatized by an alligator and now believes that she has the spirit of a twelve-year-old slave girl, Wanda Grace, living inside her. While Bob concocts schemes to drive away Leanne, former convicts who have suffered under his harsh sentences begin to seek revenge. The female protagonist, public defender Kathy Baker, has been discriminated against by "Maximum Bob." She joins forces with police sergeant Gary Hammond to unravel the mysteries surrounding the judge and his would-be assassins.

Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, writing in the New York Times, found Kathy Baker "appealing, easy to identify with and apt at the sort of decisive action one expects of an Elmore Leonard hero." He considered the novel generally less successful than its main character, however, noting that "Maximum Bob arouses one to feel the minimum." Times Literary Supplement reviewer Savkar Altinel was equally critical: "This is low-life America stripped of its despair and turned into a freak show for the amusement of those who are better off." In the Los Angeles Times Book Review, Clifford Irving was more complimentary. "Leonard, like any true comic, has a melancholy view of the world and its primitive denizens," Irving wrote. "Without moralizing, he is telling us—no, he is showing us—how rotten life is in the heartland of the USA." Novelist Barry Gifford's review in the New York Times Book Review was also laudatory. "Nobody I've ever read sets up pace, mood, and sound better than Elmore Leonard," Gifford observed.

Leonard followed Maximum Bob with Rum Punch, the story of Jackie Burke, a flight attendant who uses her position to smuggle cash into Florida for a gun runner named Ordell. Ordell and his dimwitted partner, Louis, are revived from the earlier Leonard novel, The Switch. They are on the verge of making a big score when Jackie is caught by the police. To avoid both jail and Ordell's revenge, Jackie concocts a scam involving a bondsman named Max Cherry. In the New York Times Book Review, Ann Arensberg wrote, "Outpacing the classic hard-boiled novel, leaving the British detective novel in the dust, Elmore Leonard has compressed Rum Punch into almost pure drama, as close to playwriting as novel writing can get." However, the violence of the villains provoked a negative response from other critics. New Statesman and Society reviewer John Williams was disturbed by changes in the characters of Ordell and Louis. "In The Switch they were good-bad, in Rum Punch they're plain evil," he stated. Yet, Michael Dirda noted in Washington Post Book World that the novel has a philosophical theme: "Beneath its fast-pacing surface, Rum Punch is a novel about growing old, about the way time changes us, about the dream of starting over and its cost."

Leonard's next novel, Pronto, recounts the exploits of Harry Arno, a Miami bookmaker who is skimming profits from his boss, Jimmy Capotorto. Harry flees when federal investigators pressure him into squealing on Jimmy by threatening to tell Jimmy about his indiscretions. Harry settles in Rapallo, an Italian city on the Mediterranean, where he had once been stationed during the Second World War. The city was also the scene of Harry's first and only murder, which he committed while he was in the service. He is nostalgic for the war years, and the location holds additional appeal because of his fondness for the poetry of Ezra Pound, who lived there as a dissident. Rapallo is no haven for Harry, however. He is pursued by a pair of hit men and a Stetson-wearing U.S. Marshall, Raylan Givens, who wants to take Harry and his girlfriend Joyce back into protective custody.

Dick Lochte of the Los Angeles Times Book Review commended Pronto for its blend of "the romantic notions of the past, when honor and justice and a woman's love were things to be cherished, with Leonard's particularly adroit insight into the harsh realities and tensions of today." In the New York Times Book Review Teresa Carpenter found Pronto "fun," but not so appealing as some of Leonard's earlier works. She noted that he fails to evoke Rapallo with the same realism he brings to Detroit and Miami. Times Literary Supplement reviewer Karl Miller concluded the novel was not Leonard's most convincing.

Leonard revived the characters Harry Arno and Raylan Givens in Riding the Rap. This time around, Harry has been kidnapped by a couple of would-be terrorists who want to get at his hidden money. Harry's former girlfriend Joyce, who has since become Raylan's companion, prevails on Raylan to find and rescue Harry. Between his regular assignments, Raylan pieces together the clues that eventually lead him to Harry. Along the way Raylan crosses paths with a score of oddball characters, including a mysterious psychic named Reverend Dawn. Impressed by Leonard's depiction of Reverend Dawn, Los Angeles Times Book Review critic Leonard Michaels claimed she was unique in literature. "She is absurd, convincing, good, bad, weak, effective, frightened, daring, and the whole plot turns on her actions," Michaels observed. "Whoever plays Reverend Dawn in the movie has a chance to make cultural history." Critiquing Riding the Rap in the New York Times Book Review, Martin Amis called Leonard a "literary genius." According to Amis, the author "possesses gifts—of ear and eye, of timing and phrasing—that even the most indolent and snobbish masters of the mainstream must vigorously covet."

Salon magazine reviewer Charles Taylor found Out of Sight, a 1996 work, to be "Leonard's most satisfying book in a long time." As the novel opens, Karen Sisco, a Deputy U.S. Marshall dressed in a Chanel suit, is kidnapped by escaped convict Jack Foley. Jack forces Karen into the trunk of her car and climbs in alongside her as one of his accomplices drives. The two become strangely well acquainted in the trunk. When Jack eludes Karen and escapes the law a second time, she becomes part of a team that sets out to apprehend him. She meets him again in Detroit, and they have a brief romantic encounter. However, like an earlier Leonard hero, Joseph La-Brava, Karen puts aside her infatuation in the name of the law and makes sure Jack is returned to prison.

Tackles Historical Fare

In Cuba Libre, Leonard reaches for a broader audience than those he addresses in his crime novels and westerns, by combining elements of both genres. Set in Cuba around the time of the Spanish-American War, Cuba Libre combines adventure, history, and romance with the requisite nefarious goings-on. In a move worthy of one of his novels, Leonard arranged to have Cuba Libre published on the one hundredth anniversary of the sinking of the U.S.S. Maine. In Cuba Libre, Ben Tyler is a cowboy of the bank-robbing kind; in his vigilantism, he only robs banks that contain the money of people who owe him money. When he grows tired of robbing banks, Tyler joins his friend Charlie Burke in a scheme to export horses to Cuba. They arrive in Havana just as the Spanish-American War breaks out, and suddenly these petty thieves are embroiled in the larger conflict. A Kirkus Reviews critic noted that the "three-cornered conflict"—the heroes and the sugar baron whose price they must meet, the U.S. government and Spain, and the American capitalists's interests in Cuba—"is nothing more than a classic Leonard scam writ large," with the small scam dovetailing smoothly into the larger "scams" of the political powers. Lehmann-Haupt wrote in the New York Times: "Cuba Libre is unusually rich in period atmosphere," primarily because Leonard is "as always, so uncannily at home with the slang and terminology of the times." Also writing in the New York Times Book Review, Pico Iyer criticized the lack of character development in the novel: "With so much plot . . . there is almost no room for character or emotion." Lehmann-Haupt stressed that the novel is a political satire, though "Leonard is too good a story teller to let . . . political views shape his characters."

Be Cool is a sequel to Get Shorty, once again featuring the dubious Hollywood mogul Chili Palmer. Always in search of film plots, Chili decides to help a struggling young singer make it in the music industry, just to see whether or not her story would make a good movie. In short order, Chili discovers that he has run afoul of the girl's previous manager, the Russian mafia, and a gang of rap artists. To quote Anthony Wilson-Smith in Maclean's, "The world that Leonard sketches has remained unchanged—a place where moral ambiguity abounds, and sudden, shocking violence is never more than a flick of the page away. Be Cool, like Get Shorty, skewers the pretensions of the entertainment industry." A Publishers Weekly reviewer noted that Chili "remains a compulsively appealing character, . . . retaining his immaculate cool in lethal situations." In Booklist, David Pitt suggested that the novel "reaches a level of comic surrealism that its predecessor only approached." And Lehmann-Haupt, in his New York Times review, commended Be Cool as "thoroughly entertaining. . . . [The] plot wrinkles involve a very inside knowledge of the music industry. Mr. Leonard seems to have mastered it." The reviewer concluded: "Wonderful and terrific is what I'll say about Be Cool. And leave it at that."

In the opening scenes of Pagan Babies, the central character, Terry Dunn, contemplates a ruthless massacre that occurred before his eyes while he said his first Mass in a small church in Rwanda. Five years have passed since the massacre of his congregation, and Dunn has done little in that time except to drink whiskey. When the opportunity arises to seek revenge on the murderers, however, Dunn shows his true colors—he is a petty criminal who fled America to avoid arrest for tax fraud—and he does some murdering of his own. This necessitates a rapid return to his hometown of Detroit, where, with the help of an ex-convict comedienne, he concocts new and more audacious scams. An Economist reviewer deemed Pagan Babies "one of Mr. Leonard's funniest books, with a typically colourful cast of oddballs." In the New York Times, Bruce DeSilva likewise commended the novel for its "fast pace, crackling dialogue and dark ironies." In the New York Times Book Review, Janet Maslin wrote: "The pieces of this crime tale begin falling into place so handily that Mr. Leonard might as well have hung a 'Virtuoso at Work' shingle on his door."

An itinerant high diver and a con man from Detroit form an unlikely bond in the 2002 thriller Tishomingo Blues, set in Mississippi. While setting up his diving rig at the Tishomingo Lodge & Casino, Dennis Lenahan witnesses a murder. Later that night, Lenahan meets slick, smooth-talking Robert Taylor, whose interest in local business affairs seems less than savory. "Before long they are in the thick of a slightly impenetrable crime caper involving drugs, prostitution, the local Dixie mafia and a band of obsessive civil war reenactors," wrote an Economist reviewer. The various factions gather for a final confrontation at a reenactment of the Battle of Brice's Cross Roads. "As usual," noted a contributor in Publishers Weekly, "Leonard's characters walk onto the page as real as sunlight and shadow; the dialogue is dead-on, the loopy story line strewn with the unexpected, including sudden flourishes of romance and death."

Returns to Motown Setting

Mr. Paradise, a 2004 work, is the first Leonard novel set in Detroit in fifteen years. While investigating the double murder of a wealthy octogenarian and a high-class call girl, homicide detective Frank Delsa falls for Kelly Barr, the call girl's friend and one of the prime suspects in the case. "Like the best crime thrillers—which means like most of Leonard's work—this novel is character-driven, and in its wonderfully rich, authentically human cast the story finds its surprises," observed a critic in Publishers Weekly. "Leonard virtually invented this genre with Stick . . .," noted Bill Ott in Booklist, "and he's been doing it effortlessly ever since."

If you enjoy the works of Elmore Leonard

If you enjoy the works of Elmore Leonard, you might want to check out the following books:

Carl Hiassen, Skinny Dip, 2004.

Robert B. Parker, Back Story, 2003.

Donald Westlake, The Road to Ruin, 2004.

Despite critical acclaim and considerable income generated by book and movie royalties, Leonard and his wife lead a relatively modest life in the Detroit suburb of Birmingham. The workmanlike Leonard continues to please readers with riveting plots and inventive dialogue. As New Yorker critic Whitney Baillett observed, "Book by book (he publishes almost one a year), the tireless and ingenious genre novelist Elmore Leonard is painting an intimate, precise, funny, frightening, and irresistible mural of the American underworld."

Biographical and Critical Sources

BOOKS

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 28, 1984; Volume 34, 1985; Volume 71, 1992; Volume 120, 1999.

Contemporary Novelists, 7th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 2001.

Contemporary Popular Writers, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1997.

Devlin, James E., Elmore Leonard, Twayne (Boston, MA), 1999.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 173, American Novelists since World War II, 1996; Volume 226: American Hard-Boiled Crime Writers, 2000.

Geherin, David, Elmore Leonard, Continuum (New York, NY), 1989.

Mystery and Suspense Writers: The Literature of Crime, Detection, and Espionage, Scribner (New York, NY), 1998.

St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 2000.

St. James Guide to Crime & Mystery Writers, 4th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1996.

PERIODICALS

American Film, December, 1984.

Armchair Detective, summer, 1983; winter, 1986; spring, 1986; winter, 1989.

Atlantic, June, 1998, Francis X. Rocca, review of Cuba Libre, p. 111.

Book, March-April, 2002, Rob Brookman, "Dark Genius," pp. 28-30.

Booklist, July 1, 1998, David Pitt, review of Be Cool, p. 452; June 1, 2000; December 1, 2001, Bill Ott, review of Tishomongo Blues, p. 604; November 1, 2002, Keir Graff, review of When the Women Come out to Dance: Stories, p. 452; November 15, 2003, Bill Ott, review of Mr. Paradise, p. 548; May 15, 2004, Bill Ott, review of A Coyote's in the House, p. 1621.

Boston Globe, July 30, 1992, p. 80; November 14, 1993, p. 7.

Chicago Tribune, February 4, 1981; April 8, 1983; December 8, 1983; February 7, 1985.

Chicago Tribune Book World, April 10, 1983; October 30, 1983; May 21, 1995.

Christian Science Monitor, November 4, 1983; March 12, 1997.

Commentary, May, 1985, pp. 64, 66-67.

Creative Screenwriting, summer, 1997, Laura Schiff, "Thirty Years Overnight Success: Interview with Elmore Leonard," pp. 44-49.

Detroiter, June, 1974.

Detroit News, February 23, 1982; October 23, 1983.

Economist, June 19, 1999, review of Be Cool, p. 4; October 14, 2000, "New Thrillers—Hit Men," p. 106; February 23, 2002, "All the Way Southron."

Entertainment Weekly, September 22, 2000, Bruce Fretts, "Out of Sight," p. 68.

Esquire, April, 1987, pp. 169-74; October, 2000, Daniel Mendelsohn, "Quien Es Mas Macho?," p. 100.

Film Comment, March-April, 1998, Patrick McGilligan, "Get Dutch," p. 43.

Globe and Mail (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), December 14, 1985.

Kirkus Reviews, November 15, 1997, p. 1665; October 15, 2002, review of When the Women Come Out to Dance, p. 1497; November 1, 2003, review of Mr. Paradise, p. 1290; May 15, 2004, review of A Coyote's in the House, p. 494.

Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service, September 20, 2000, Chauncey Mabe, review of Pagan Babies, p. K2148; September 27, 2000, Marta Salij, "Elmore Leonard Reaches beyond Familiar Setting," p. K3888; October 4, 2000, Marta Salij, "Elmore Leonard: A Mob Mentality," p. K7276.

Library Journal, October 15, 1991, p. 140; January, 2002, Karen Anderson, review of Tishomingo Blues, p. 153.

Listener, April 9, 1987, p. 28; October 4, 1990, pp. 30-31.

London Review of Books, September 5, 1985, p. 16.

Los Angeles Times, June 28, 1984; May 4, 1988; January 26, 1998.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, February 27, 1983; December 4, 1983; January 13, 1985; August 30, 1987, pp. 2, 8; April 23, 1989, p. 14; July 29, 1990, Charles Champlin, "Leonard Cocks a Snook at Hollywood," p. 9; August 4, 1991, Clifford Irving, review of Maximum Bob, pp. 2, 9; October 24, 1994, Dick Lochte, "When Honor and Justice Were Things to Be Cherished," p. 8; May 14, 1995, Leonard Michaels, "Good Guys Win," p. 1.

Maclean's, January 19, 1987; March 16, 1998, Brian Bethune, review of Cuba Libre, p. 63; November 13, 2000, Anthony Wilson-Smith, "Crime, Two Ways," p. 74.

Michigan Magazine (Sunday magazine of the Detroit News), October 9, 1983.

Nation, December 4, 1995, p. 724.

New Republic, November 13, 1995, p. 32; January 26, 1998.

New Statesman and Society, October 11, 1991, p. 25; November 13, 1992, John Williams, "Gumshoes in Gridlock," review of Rum Punch, p. 86.

Newsweek, March 22, 1982; July 11, 1983; November 14, 1983; April 22, 1985, pp. 62-64, 67; December 23, 2002, "Newsmakers," p. 75.

New York, May 2, 1988, p. 86.

New Yorker, September 3, 1990, Whitney Balliett, "Elmore Leonard in Hollywood," pp. 106-107; October 23, 1995, p. 96; September 30, 1996; January 12, 1998; January 26, 1998; February 11, 2002, review of Tishomingo Blues, p. 86.

New York Times, June 11, 1982; April 28, 1983; October 7, 1983; October 29, 1983; April 26, 1985; May 2, 1988; July 25, 1991, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, "Tough Talk, Shootouts, Auras, and A Loopy Lady," p. C18; September 23, 1993, p. C18; May 11, 1995; August 15, 1996; February 15, 1996; January 18, 1997; June 7, 1997; February 14, 1997; December 24, 1997; January 22, 1998, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, "Viva la Genre! Elmore Leonard Visits Old Havana"; February 11, 1999, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, "Get Musical: Chili Palmer's Latest Movie Idea"; September 7, 2000, Janet Maslin, "'New Elmore Leonard?' 'Yeah. You Know. Punks,'"; July 16, 2001, "Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points, and Especially Hooptedoodle," p. E1; January 28, 2002, Janet Maslin, "Leaving out the Parts Readers Skip," p. E8; December 16, 2002, Janet Maslin, "Nine Tales from the Underside, Where the Talk Is Terse," p. E7; June 18, 2004, Janet Maslin, "Crowd Pleasers," p. 25E.

New York Times Book Review, May 22, 1977; September 5, 1982; March 6, 1983; December 27, 1983; February 10, 1985, Stephen King, "What Went down When Magyk Went Up," p. 7; January 4, 1987, p. 7; July 29, 1990, Nora Ephron, "The Shylock Is the Good Guy," pp. 1, 28; July 28, 1991, Barry Gifford, "The Alligator Rings Twice," p. 8; August 16, 1992, Ann Arensberg, "Elmore Leonard for Beginners," p. 13; October 17, 1993, Teresa Carpenter, "On the Land in Rapallo," p. 39; May 14, 1995, Martin Amis, "Junk Souls," p. 7; September 8, 1996; January 22, 1998; February 8, 1998; September 20, 1998, Charles Salzberg, review of The Tonto Woman, p. 24; February 21, 1999, Kinky Friedman, "The Palmer Method," p. 10; September 17, 2000, Bruce DeSilva, "Turned Collar," p. 19; February 3, 2002, Joe Queenan, "Occupational Hazard," p. 7; December 29, 2002, Charles Taylor, "I Can Hear Their Voices," p. 6; February 1, 2004, Ann Beattie, "First, Let's Kill the Lawyer," p. 6.

New York Times Magazine, November 16, 1997.

Observer, September 22, 1991, p. 59; August 16, 1992, p. 13.

People, March 4, 1985; October 25, 1993, p. 38; January 26, 2004, Steve Dougherty, review of Mr. Paradise, p. 43.

Publishers Weekly, February 25, 1983; June 15, 1990, Sybil Steinberg, review of Get Shorty, p. 55; June 10, 1996, p. 84; November 16, 1998, review of Be Cool, p. 52; December 10, 2001, review of Tishomingo Blues, p. 48; January 21, 2002, "Dutch in Detroit," pp. 52-56; November 24, 2003, review of Mr. Paradise, p. 42; May 17, 2004, review of A Coyote's in the House, p. 51.

Rolling Stone, February 28, 1985.

Salon, September 9, 1996, Charles Taylor, review of Out of Sight.

Spectator, November 27, 1993, David Montrose, "Great Expectations Unfulfilled," p. 42.

Sun-Sentinel (South Florida), September 20, 2000, Chauncey Mabe, review of Pagan Babies.

Time, May 28, 1984, J. D. Reed, "A Dickens from Detroit," pp. 84, 86; February 24, 1997; August 18, 1997; January 12, 1998.

Times (London, England), April 23, 1987.

Times Literary Supplement, December 5, 1986, p. 1370; November 30, 1990, David Papineau, "When the Boiling Gets Soft," p. 1287; September 27, 1991, Savkar Altinel, review of Maximum Bob, p. 24; October 30, 1992, p. 21; November 5, 1993, Karl Miller, "Capo Conversations," p. 20.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), April 10, 1983; October 30, 1983; April 9, 1989, pp. 1, 4; May 21, 1995, section 14, p. 5.

TV Guide, August 1, 1998, Lawrence Grobel, "Get Elmore!," p. 23.

U.S. News and World Report, March 9, 1987.

Village Voice, February 23, 1982.

Voice Literary Supplement, February, 1985, p. 4.

Wall Street Journal, January 29, 1998.

Washington Post, October 6, 1980; February 6, 1985.

Washington Post Book World, February 7, 1982; July 4, 1982; February 20, 1983; November 13, 1983; December 28, 1986, p. 3; August 23, 1987, pp. 1-2; May 1, 1988; July 14, 1991, pp. 1-2; July 19, 1992, Michael Dirda, "Dreams Die Hard," p. 2.

Witness, Volume 14, number 2, Keith Taylor, "Bad Guys Are More Fun: An Interview with Elmore Leonard," pp. 126-141.

Writer, November, 1997, Lewis Burke Frumkes, "A Conversation with . . . Elmore Leonard," pp. 22-24.

Xavier Review, Volume 7, number 2, Robert E. Skinner, "To Write Realistically: An Interview with Elmore Leonard," pp. 37-46.