ABSTRACT

Elmore Leonard is the reigning patriarch of American crime fiction, the author of 29 novels and owner of a prose style and narrative skill that have drawn wide acclaim. Seemingly the heir to Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, Leonard drew his own inspiration elsewhere: from writers as varied as Ernest Hemingway and Richard Bissell, and the great crime films of the 1930s and ’40s. Employing a reporter’s ear and a gift for interior monologue that makes even the most cutthroat villains seem.. .familiar, Leonard’s work reaches beyond mere genre writing.