Elmore Leonard, 1925–2013

The author who made his bad guys interesting

Elmore Leonard rarely bothered to plot out his acclaimed crime novels in advance. “I develop characters, and I’m not sure where they’re going until I get to know them,” he once said. If a minor character started to sparkle, Leonard would give up the reins and let him lead the story. “If I’m curious enough to turn the pages,” he said, “I figure it’ll have the same effect on readers.”

It almost always did, said the Los Angeles Times. Leonard’s “tales of con men, hustlers, and killers” made him the most acclaimed crime novelist of his generation and “one of Hollywood’s favorite storytellers.” Such characters as Florida loan shark Chili Palmer in Get Shorty, played on screen by John Travolta, and laconic Kentucky lawman Raylan Givens, the center of the television series Justified, bear the inimitable stamp of what British novelist Martin Amis called Leonard’s enviable gifts “of ear and eye, of timing, and of phrasing.”

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