I hate it when writers die. Naturally, I feel sympathy for the family, friends and fans of an author, but when a good author dies, he takes so many others with him.
Barbara Mertz (aka Elizabeth Peters & Barbara Michaels) died peacefully at home early in the morning of Aug. 8, 2013. And when she died, Amelia Peabody, Vicky Bliss and all of the other characters so many of us loved or hated died with her.
When Patrick O'Brian died, he left Jack Aubrey newly promoted to Rear Admiral and his fans hanging. And since I had only discovered his series the year before he passed away, I was particularly bereft.
We will always have the memories of the past escapades of the characters that are lost, but the future for them is over. Sadly. Below the fold are some of the people who we may all miss with Elmore Leonard's passing on August 20, 2013.
Elmore Leonard,
Miami Book Fair International, 1989
Elmore Leonard was one of the very best at what he did. Specializing in tales that blurred the lines between the bad guys and the good guys, his finest talent was in his clipped, realistic dialogue.
Born in New Orleans in 1925, his father's job took the family to Detroit nine years later where Leonard grew up, went to school and returned after serving in the Navy during WWII.
Keeping his day job at an advertising agency, Leonard began writing Western stories for magazines like Argosy during the 50s and 60s. His first Western novel was published in 1953. One of my favorite western movies was based on his work: Hombre (I was never sure that my affection for Hombre was based on how good the movie was or how blue were the eyes of Paul Newman). Also finding their way to Hollywood were Valdez is Coming, Joe Kidd and 3:10 to Yuma.
In 1969 Leonard published his first crime novel,
The Big Bounce, introducing the world to Jack Ryan, a petty crook from Detroit who would reappear as a process server in
Swag in 1976 and
Unknown Man No. 89 in 1977.
Jack Ryan always wanted to play pro ball. But he couldn't hit a curveball, so he turned his attentions to less legal pursuits. A tough guy who likes walking the razor's edge, he's just met his match—and more—in Nancy. She's a rich man's plaything, seriously into thrills and risk, and together she and Jack are pure heat ready to explode. But when simple housebreaking and burglary give way to the deadly pursuit of a really big score, the stakes suddenly skyrocket. Because violence and double-crosses are the name of this game—and it's going to take every ounce of cunning Jack and Nancy possess to survive . . . each other.
Harper Collins
Also appearing in
Swag is Ernest Stickley Jr., an ex-con who gets a staring role in
Stick
After serving time for armed robbery, Ernest “Stick” Stickley is back on the outside and trying to stay legit. But it's tough staying straight in a crooked town—and Miami is a pirate's paradise, where investment fat cats and lowlife drug dealers hold hands and dance. And when a crazed player chooses Stick at random to die for another man's sins, the struggling ex-con is left with no choice but to dive right back into the game. Stick knows a good thing when he sees it—and a golden opportunity to run a very profitable sweet-revenge scam seems much too tasty to pass up.
Barnes & Noble
In
The Hot Kid, Elmore Leonard takes us back to the time of his youth in the 30s and 40s with Carl Webster, U.S. Marshal, who returns in
Up in Honey's Room and
Comfort to the Enemy and Other Carl Webster Stories.
Carlos Webster was fifteen in the fall of 1921 the first time he came face-to-face with a nationally known criminal. A few weeks later, he killed his first man—a cattle thief who was rustling his dad's stock.
Now Carlos, called Carl, is the hot kid of the U.S. Marshals Service, one of the elite manhunters currently chasing the likes of Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, and Pretty Boy Floyd across America's Depression-ravaged heartland. Carl wants to be the country's most famous lawman.
Harper Collins
Get Shorty introduced us to Chili Palmer who returned in
Be Cool and for some of us will always look exactly like John Travolta.
Mob-connected loan shark Chili Palmer is sick of the Miami grind—plus his “friends” have a bad habit of dying there. So when he chases a deadbeat client out to Hollywood, Chili figures he might like to stay. This town, with its dream-makers, glitter, hucksters, and liars—plus gorgeous, partially clad would-be starlets everywhere you look—seems ideal for an enterprising criminal with a taste for the cinematic. Besides, Chili’s got an idea for a killer movie, though it could very possibly kill him to get it made.
Harper Collins
My current favorite has to be Raylan Givens, the US Marshal of Justified fame, deftly portrayed by Timothy Olyphant on the TV machine.
Perhaps if he had spent a writing lifetime focusing on circus performers or bankers or chefs or naval chiefs or teachers or firefighters, Leonard would have produced a different variety of prose, something not so silky and subtle and yet so full of speed as what he has given to us over the years. I don’t know. As it happens, he chose the underworld and the world just above it - the world of law - as his main territory. And like the lawmen and some of the bad men in Leonard’s early Westerns, and like many of the main actors in many of Leonard’s crime novels set in and around Detroit and Miami, Raylan Givens is quick to draw - if drawn upon - and shoots to kill.
Alan Cheuse, San Francisco Chronicle
Even Leonard enjoyed the series based on his character, so much so that he wrote a fourth book in the series.
"I think it’s a terrific show. I love all of the writing, and I’m amazed sometimes that they’ve got the characters better than I put them on paper. They are doing a good job, really a good job ... Well, they’re pros, to begin
with. They know what they’re doing. Good
writing. I think, the writing, I can’t believe it
sometimes. My god, it’s a lot better than what I
would have written in the scene, you know."
Hollywood Reporter
Over a lifetime of writing, Elmore Leonard wrote more than 40 novels, in his spare, clean prose. He included, in his
10 Rules for Successful Writing, the admonition to "Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip." And he never used a word other than "said" to "carry the dialogue. It was dialogue that moved his stories forward. His writing included little descriptive prose, which suited Hollywood filmmakers just fine and 20 films were made of his work, with another due out later this year.
Recognition did come to Elmore Leonard, although it took its own sweet time to do so. In 1992 he was given the Grand Master Award of the Mystery Writers of America.
MWA's Grand Master Award represents the pinnacle of achievement in mystery writing and was established to acknowledge important contributions to this genre, as well as a body of work that is both significant and of consistent high quality.
He made no secret of his contempt for the world of finer literature, as he told a reporter for NPR when they talked at a book festival in Tucson in 2010:
"Most of these writers don't write for a living," he said. "They write for tenure. Or for the New York Times. Or to get invited to conferences like this. When you write to make the rent or send your kids to school, you learn how to write without a lot of nonsense."
NPR
Those comments did not deter the National Book Foundation from bestowing its Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters last year. He is also the holder of a Lifetime Achievement Award from PEN USA.
The Elmore Leonard website has a complete list of all of his work, and all of the people he took with him when he left us.
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