I have many favorites, actually. Many names that perk me up when I see their names on a book jacket after a long hiatus(although with Leonard, there are no long hiatuses, all the more reason he should be a Chuck Norris-style mythological figure to ink-stained wretches like me.) Elmore Leonard remains special, and it's only partially because you could fill a cineplex with his many classic and cult-classic film and TV adaptations, although if you asked, I could go on for ages about my favorites, such as FX's Justified, and "Out of Sight". about the forbidden love between a career bank robber, played by George Clooney in the movie, and a tough US Marshal played by Jennifer Lopez. Follow me below the fold for some of the reasons I think Kossacks should be Leonard fans.
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1. He cares about all his characters.
That doesn't mean he doesn't have awful things happen to them, sometimes in quite graphic fashion, but nobody in a Leonard story is simply a stock type, like the heavy, or the romantic interest...they all have their moments of dimension, and occasionally, poetry. There are very few writers I know that can render the speech of bookies, ex-coalminers and Hollywood executives and make you feel you are hearing real talk as it happens.Even the villains act in ways that sometimes make you feel for them.When violence breaks out, as it often does in LeonardWorld, there is often a sense of loss to go with the vicarious satisfaction.
2."If you don't enjoy crime, might as well get you a job."
Cuba, the driver in Leonard's latest work, Raylan, is talking about his own past life boosting fast cars, but if there's a unifying theory of the best Leonard bad guys, this is probably it. Which is refreshing in an era when evil comes to us dressed in navy blue, mouthing pieties about economic growth and job creation. Boyd Crowder blows things up because he loves it and is good at it(although he sometimes throws in white-power for the rubes) This leads to much wackier, almost festive, crime, compared to real life, all-girl gangs of bank robbers, kidney thieves in Obama masks, in one book an alligator used as a weapon to intimidate a judge's offbeat wife. In LeonardWorld, we don't just accept that it's a crazy world, we luxuriate in it. And, yet, his world is not completely cut off from the one we share...Leonard characters are very up with the flow of pop culture and things going on at the times the books are written.
3. The language.
While Leonard's work has signatures like I've described, and a certain amount of moral ambiguity, I almost never feel that he has written the same book twice. I admire that they hit the ground running, are funny without being loaded with catchphrases or repeated gags, and always seem to land us right in the right spot in the action. While I'm not sure it's as simple as "Don't write what most people skip," it is a skill to be envied.
Tue Aug 20, 2013 at 11:19 AM PT: Just thought I'd republish this as a tribute.