He’s been referred to by the rather unwieldy sobriquet of “The Master of Contemporary American Crime Fiction.” And many critics and readers have agreed that he’s a worthy heir to the hardboiled fiction of scribes like James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and Jim Thompson.
But the more apt description that’s often laid on him is “The Dickens of Detroit.”
That’s because for decades, Elmore Leonard churned out scores of novels, short stories, screenplays, and even non-fiction chronicling the underbelly of underworld activities. His work is noted for his use of realistic and hard-hitting dialogue. And (perhaps as a nod to his literary hero, Ernest Hemingway) never using ten words to describe something when three will do just fine.
He’s probably best known in the wider culture for the adaptations of his work on the big screen (Get Shorty, Out of Sight, Be Cool, Jackie Brown, 3:10 to Yuma) and the small one (Justified, with the wildly popular character Raylan Givens). But it’s his work on the typewritten page that gets the lion’s share of attention in C.M. Kushins’ Cooler Than Cool: The Life and Work of Elmore Leonard (512 pp., $32, Mariner Books).
It’s the first full-length look at the prolific Leonard. Paul Challen’s 2000 work Get Dutch! (a nod to Leonard’s well-known nickname) was a relatively slim volume. Kushins’ research also benefits in that he had the full cooperation of Leonard’s family and access to all of his archives, papers, diaries and research materials.
As a young man, Leonard didn’t necessarily have the fiery ambition to write fiction, after serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II and then going to college on the GI Bill. but through sheer determination and a set schedule, he went down that road.
His earliest sales were Western tales sold to pulp magazines like Argosy and Dime Western in the end days of the format. That led to semi-successful novels like The Bounty Hunters and Hombre.
But even as his name got bigger, Leonard still kept his day job in an advertising firm, rising diligently at 5 a.m. to try and churn out a couple of pages before he had to start getting ready for the office job at 7 a.m.
He was understandably hesitant to give up that secure paycheck, considering that he was married and would have a family that included five children born in quick succession to support. And even after he “quit” the day gig, he’d still return to it during a lull in his fiction writing, even opening his own one-man agency at one point.
Kushins marks the “birth” of Leonard’s turn to crime fiction after the author—who had dabbled in the genre— devoured George V. Higgins’ novel The Friends of Eddie Coyle. Heavy on dialogue and gritty, it proved to be an inspiration to early works like 52 Pickup, Swag, Unknown Man No. 89, and The Hunted.
All of his works would feature meticulous research in which Leonard (and, then for 30 years, assistant Gregg Sutter) might travel around the country and the world to interview people and dig through mountains of books and materials to get just the right detail on phrases, customs, geography and police or criminal procedures.
Kushins also sheds light on how Leonard was constantly rewriting, changing plot points and characters, and adapting his novels for potential film interest. Abandoned or unfulfilled projects with titles like Jesus Saves, American Flag, and Picket Line also crop up.
Here, Kushins recounts the basic plot of each of Leonard’s novels, as a memory jigger for fans and a guide to new readers. In fact, the page count here is much more heavily weighted to the professional than the personal.
On the personal side, Leonard’s three marriages (with two divorces and one wife’s death), and frequent bouts with severe alcoholism into his 40’s are covered. And while he successfully beat the booze, he did love his marijuana. After his death, his grandchildren even found “Goppa’s last stash” and sparked up in his honor.
Throughout, Kushins notes that acclaimed novelists like Stephen King, Martin Amis, and Margaret Atwood were diehard Leonard fans. And his forays into movies mean that Clint Eastwood, George Clooney, Burt Reynolds, Quentin Tarantino, Sidney Poitier, Dustin Hoffman, and others make cameo appearances. In fact, Hoffman is outed as the inspiration for the egotistic diminutive actor named in the title of Get Shorty.
Leonard continued his workman’s pace of producing a new novel every two years. An almost assembly line fashion that dovetails neatly with his Detroit car manufacturing assembly culture. And the ‘90s and 2000’s found him revisiting characters, returning to the Western, and penning sequels and spinoffs in titles like Maximum Bob, Rum Punch, Out of Sight, Be Cool, Riding the Rap, Pronto, and Tishomingo Blues.
Cuba Libre, Djibouti and Pagan Babies even expanded his palette into historical fiction and Third World subjects. And his “10 Rules of Writing” were pinned up on many a writer’s bulletin board (Samples: “Never open a book with weather.” “Avoid prologues.” “Don’t go into great detail describing places and things. “Never use ‘suddenly’ or ‘all hell broke loose’”).
Houston is mentioned once in the book, as the place where Steely Dan mastermind Donald Fagen (misspelled as Fagan here) wrote him a fan letter just prior to a show in the early 2000’s.
Elmore Leonard died in 2013 at the age of 87 with at least two unfinished novels still in the pipeline. And yes, his gravestone actually says, “The Dickens of Detroit.” Cooler Than Cool is the Elmore Leonard bio that readers have been wanting for years. A real Dutch treat.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.
