Elmore Leonard didn’t write crime fiction, westerns, historical thrillers or mysteries. He wrote Elmore Leonard books. No, that’s not quite right. He wrote Elmore Leonard books. You can bring an Elmore Leonard book to someone totally unfamiliar with genre fiction, say “try this” and make a believer out of them within the first few pages. When they run through everything from THE BOUNTY HUNTERS to MR. MAJESTYK (“hey...didn’t they make a movie of this?”) to FIFTY-TWO PICKUP to, yes, RAYLAN, they come back to you and ask, “Can you recommend anything else like this?” And you can, with the admonition that it will be almost, but not quite, as good as the real thing.
Elmore “Dutch” Leonard became an overnight success at age 60. That “overnight” took a bit longer than eight hours; it took over 30 years, actually. Sure, he achieved some degrees of success before that, including a number of books adapted to film, but he never had a bestseller until GLITZ released in 1985. His first novel was published in 1953, before most of his fan base could hold a pencil properly or, indeed, before their parents could. Those of us who struggle toward the dream of being consistently published and bemoan the unfairness of it all, grumbling that the world has yet to recognize our obvious genius, should read STICK or HOMBRE or any one of a couple of dozen books that Leonard wrote before he “broke through” and perhaps rethink our positions.
Leonard’s books were well-balanced between plot and characterization. His plots were about breaking even as opposed to saving the world. His villains were not masterminds; if they were, they would have been at Oak Ridge instead of holding up Detroit supermarkets, back in the day when there were Detroit supermarkets. No, the cops and robbers, lowlifes and knights, were real people, folks who we could meet in this world if we got out of our cars and rubbed elbows with the sidewalk denizens of the lesser parts of town. The dialogue, however, was the hallmark of each and every book Leonard ever wrote. It was nothing fancy or flowery; it was real and funny and memorable. The film adaptations of his books that worked --- and not all of them did --- were the ones that used his dialogue. It’s as simple as that. If you watch “Justified,” which is based on Leonard’s Raylan Givens character from the short story “Fire in the Hole,” among other places, you already know this.
Elmore Leonard has gone ahead, but he is not gone. He is on our shelves, in our bookcases, on our screens, and in our hearts and minds. He will be passed down to generations as I have passed down his novels to my own children who, yes, are waiting to pass them down to theirs. That is true immortality. That is Dutch Leonard.
