Aug 20, 2013 The Book Beast
The author who balanced grit and humor in some of the best crime fiction ever written, is dead at 87. Malcolm Jones interviewed him at the height of his success.
Before he died this morning at 87, he had written more than three dozen novels and probably hundreds of short stories. A good many of those novels and stories were made into films that ranged from westerns (Hombre, 3:10 to Yuma) to crime novels (Get Shorty, Out of Sight). Screenwriters surely loved working on scripts based on Leonard’s lean prose. The plots came trimmed of fat, and the crisp, funny dialogue was already there on the page. And he always packed a lot into a small space: the television series Justified was inspired by a single Leonard short story, “Fire in the Hole.” As far as screenwriters were concerned, adapting him to the screens big or small must have seemed like going on vacation.
Certainly that was the way it felt to someone who read him simply for pleasure. Some of the books were better than others, but all of them were the work of a pro who didn’t want his readers to have to do the heavy lifting. Put another way, he wanted the reader to get his or her money’s worth, and so even the worst were satisfying.
Some of Leonard’s protagonists were smooth operators (Chili Palmer) and some were charming bumblers (Out of Sight’s feckless bank robber Jack Foley), but Leonard found ways to make all of them memorable with just a few lines of description and dialogue. He didn’t waste time on pretty writing. Everything in a Leonard story was there to propel the plot along, and his books sped along like vehicles in a frictionless universe.
When I interviewed him in 2002, I asked if he wrote with the movies in the back of his mind. His reply, like all of his conversation that day, was terse, to the point, and not a little funny:
“Back when I was just starting out, they were in the front of my mind, because I wanted to make some money. Now it’s just my style: writing in scenes, always from one character’s point of view, moving the story with dialogue—like a movie.”
He had flown into New York City from his home outside Detroit to promote a new book of short stories, When the Women Come Out to Dance. The city was in the midst of an unpredicted snow storm, and by the time Leonard had walked from his publisher’s office to the restaurant, his loafers were all but ruined. He didn’t complain, just took off his Kangol cap, sat down to lunch, and asked what I wanted to know. I was impressed.
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