Elmore Leonard Books

I've read tons of books in my day, so when a friend recommended Rob Fox's "Buzzkill" I felt obligated to at least skim through it. Well, I'm glad I did! This truly is a book I couldn't put down! As I entered the world Mr. Fox created...right here in my hometown...I couldn't stand to leave! I kept trying to figure out how this was going to turn out, and I was constantly wrong!
A real updated Hollywood Film Noir, with characters that jump off the page and a lead character you just cheer for the whole way. You might not want to live next door to these guys, but you'll be glad they do!
Thanks Mr. Fox for a terrific ride! I look forward to reading more of your work.

Buzzkill is an entertaining read, filled with bizarre characters and plot twists that are still somehow believable. Rob Fox's sharp wit and ironic observations of the Hollywood industry hit spot on. I especially enjoyed the hilarious and mocking physical descriptions of the characters.

Buzzkill by Rob Fox is smart, sexy, and funny. Fox's insider view of Hollywood is spot on. His characters are wonderful. Buzzkill is an entertaining book that makes you think!

Clever & enjoyable read; Mr. Fox makes our sad but hopeful hero loveable and sympathetic. Can't wait for another book....

"Buzzkill" is a hilarious, laugh-out-loud, dead on Tinsel Town murder mystery. Rob Fox's rich characters and frenetic pacing made it impossible to put it down until the very last page.

After I picked up Suite Française by Irene Nemirovsky, I happened to look at the cover-design credit and recognized the name Chip Kidd. After a moment's reflection as to the source of my familiarity with the designer, I walked over to my bookshelf and picked up a volume from my collection of Osamu Tezuka's Buddha. Sure enough, Kidd had designed the covers for the entire series (incidentally, I found the design one part frustrating and one part inspiring, as the spines line up nicely and thematically but the half-jacket is kind of obnoxious to deal with).

After that, I went through my shelves and picked out any of the books that I thought had interesting covers. At least half of those were designed by Kidd as well. Kafka on the Shore. Pagan Babies. The Enigma of Japanese Power. Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans. Et cetera.

I was intrigued, Googled our dear designer, and found that he was more popular than I had properly imagined. This piqued still further my curiosity. And so now I have another book with a cover designed by Kidd: Chip Kidd: Book One: Work: 1986-2006, a 400-page volume exhibiting a sample of his book-jacket designwork from the last twenty years.

The book itself is a treasure. A visual smorgasbord of styles and themes. A veritable cornucopia of novel treatments. While there is an occasional overlap of feel or technique (or some other abstract quantification equally obscured and subjective), the breadth of design direction is truly impressive.

Kidd is clearly a creative devil.

And this collection of his work is impressively presented. Book One is a treat for both the eyes and the mind. While a mere presentation of the jacket designs themselves would be a worthwhile scheme for a design collection such as this, the work is elevated by helpful descriptions both of product and process by the creator himself as well as reactions penned by authors/victims of his creative process. Kidd's text shows both a joy in his work and a look into what goes into the crafting of a book jacket that enlarges upon the work it containsand does so with humour and more apparent humility than I would have expected.

I found the book so interesting that I blew through the entire thing in two days. Doubtlessly, I'll return to it time and again over the coming months and years. In any case, I highly recommend it to those interested in thoughtful design, a pairing of words too rare in our day.

NOTE: a big bone of contention is not the visual design of the volume's cover but its physical properties. While its dimensions are perfectly suitable for an art collection/coffee table read, the unique composition of its cover can be difficult to negotiate. The hardback cover only extends (front and back) to the point of the spine of the book photographed on the cover. Inside the hardback cover is a paperback cover that extends to house the rest of the book. It is awkward, certainly, and took a bit of getting used to, but once I became accustomed to the book, holding it comfortably ceased to be a difficulty. Heh, a book with a physical learning curvethat was a new one for me.

This is a great, great book. If you're a fan of Kidd's work, by all means buy this book. If you are at all interested in truly inspirational graphic design, this book is a must-have.

PROS: having so many of Kidd's designs in one place is worth the price of admission, inclusion of the development and back story of each cover is interesting and elucidating, stories of his adventures in the trade are well-written and fun to learn about.

CONS: the cover is awkward, the shape of the book makes it hard to hold while reading - you really have to put it on something flat - it's sometimes difficult to decipher exactly which pictures the captions are referencing.

There is a definite form-over-function issue with the book, but the content is what counts - and that gets 5 stars from me without a quibble.

I HAD to buy this book after having read about it in another forum. Kidd's artworks are superb!

This book is bound with a split hardback/softback cover, so if you appreciate design -- which I assume you do since you're considering a compilation of book designs -- the book is worth buying for this odd cover arrangement alone.

This an excellent ,colorful book with very useful and informative comments,they are also humorous.Kidd mentions that he shows failed designs when he lectures to show that even a successful designer has failures.Unfortunately,in my opinion,the jacket for this volume falls in this category,its clever but not practical.because the cover is split in two parts its an irritation to hold and eventually the cover will be bent when laying down or storing in shelf.Still a must have in this genre.Now how about a Susan Mitchell collection?
ps.i followed my advice and bought the hardcover .Amazing its even more unwieldy,the cover is half hard and half soft,yikes!I ended up buying the soft cover to keep and treat it very carefully ,was that the point of this nutty design?I guess this cover will enter the hall of fame and certainly will be a collectors item if its never opened.Argghh!!!

Elmore Leonard's style is timeless, genre not withstanding...

His western stories are typical of him: Underdog with a will of iron against evil men.

Highly recommended.

In the course of the last month, I've become a big fan of Elmore Leonard's Westerns. I'm new to the Western, late in the game. After a few L'Amour's, a friend put me on to Leonard. He's the very top of the genre, in my view. The dialogue and the action tell the story and make the points about toughness and character, not the sentimental interior thought process of the hero, so common in this genre; at least what I've seen thus far.
In The Law at Randado (one of the titles in this collection), Kirby Frye is young and green (as a deputy), but he stands up to the townsmen and Phil Sundeen, the bad cattle baron, much to their surprise. He reminds me a lot of the implacable Roberto Valdez in "Valdez is Coming" (I think Leonard's greatest Western), and there are similar qualities to the story. But this is early Leonard (1954), and he only gets better as time goes on.
We again meet the scoundrel Sundeen and see his fate in Gunsights, a much later book (1979).
It's going to be hard to go back to other Western authors having been introduced to Elmore Leonard this early on!

Although the author has tended to underrate his earliest work in the Western genre, later Elmore Leonard crime novels like CITY PRIMEVAL, KILLSHOT (a corker, by the way) and OUT OF SIGHT are certainly influenced by earlier books such as VALDEZ IS COMING. He will often include references to the movie Westerns that were made from his stories in the novels. The famous restaurant confrontation between Chili Palmer and a stuntman-bodyguard in GET SHORTY imitates a similiar scene in the Leonard-written Clint Eastwood movie JOE KIDD (which Chili, a true movie buff, remembers vividly). The very funny novel PRONTO gets even funnier when you realize that Leonard is, to a great degree, satirizing traditional Western heroics and the conventions of a genre that he truly understands and loves. I can't imagine any fan of Elmore Leonard's - or the American Western - being disappointed in THE LAW AT RANDADO (my personal favorite), HOMBRE (which won the Golden Spur Award for the 100 best Western novels of all time) or VALDEZ IS COMING. It's great to have these books back in print in any form (as well as the new set of Western shorts THE TONTO WOMAN) and collectors should move fast - these tend to be taken out of print very quickly. Don't buy one - buy all three!!

"Valdez is Coming" is the story of a quiet, seemingly humble Mexican constable going against seemingly impossible odds....only he (former Apache hunter and seasoned killer), knows what he is truly capable of.....Leonard's best, most bare-bones work.

"Hombre" is the bleak story of suffering, self-centeredness and casual cruelty, with only one man, (a white hard-case raised by Apaches) standing between the "good" people and their demise.I didn't enjoy this story as much as "VIC", but it remains in my mind at the 5-star level.

I cannot poosibly recommend this enough.

I picked this book up at San Francisco International Airport (which has a great bookstore in the United Airlines terminal) thinking I'd like to relax with a western. I have always loved Elmore Leonard's work, so it seemed like a fit to choose one by him instead of old Louis (another master). I've got to say Leonard HAS IT as a western writer. VALDEZ IS COMING is outstanding. The story is the kind I love: picks you up and takes you for a ride -- non-stop. I think what I liked best about this novel is that Valdez is such a great character, and that the story is absolutely relentless in its pacing. HOMBRE is great as well, also relentless, though I prefer the "voice" of VALDEZ over HOMBRE. So who knew that Leonard was not only THE master at dialogue, but also dynamite at characterization in a very literate western. Read it. You'll love it. I liked it so much that I just now ordered Western Roundup numbers 1 & 2. Thank you Elmore Leonard and thank you Amazon for making it so easy to be a discerning reader. Aloha!

I knew Leonard only by reputation and the movie "Get Shorty". I thought I'd pick him up someday. Meanwhile, I started to read westerns, and picked up a few L'Amours. Louis is good. But a friend told me that Leonard wrote westerns before mystery/thrillers. Try him, he said. I did, first with Valdez is Coming, then with Hombre.
These two books are the best westerns I've read, and I'm reading the rest of Leonards. Stripped-down dialogue, steady action, and an atmosphere and voice that is totally captivating. The ending of Valdez is Coming is powerful and perfect, and I reread it several times. Hombre has great action and a strong moral message, but delivered sparely and without the sometimes windy sentimentality found in L'Amour. These two novels are very, very good indeed.

A hero with a troubled past. A modern day damsel in distress. Villains with competing agendas who are themselves interesting but keep you guessing. What's not to love? This is Elmore Leonard at his best, epitomizing the genre. Several mysteries come into play as the story unfolds. Perhaps the biggest mystery of all, though, is why this book never got the recognition it deserved or caught the right attention to merit transformation into a great movie. Whether or not this happens one day, the book remains a great read.

My first approach to Elmore Leonard had been "Get Shorty".Nothing especial. But this crime story is really involving and impressing.Absolutely to read.

this is a good merchant to work w/came quickly and was
in good shape

Essential Leonard....

"The Hunted" is one of the most entertaining stories I've ever had the pleasure and escape of reading....(see my Amazon review, if you like).

"Swag" introduces us to Frank and Earnest, and their attempts to follow the "10 Golden Rules of Robbery"...Beautiful.

"Mr Majestyk"..Small town farmer against the big city thugs....based on a screenplay.....Typical Elmore, nothing super-special here, but as always, enjoyable.

Elmore Leonard is one of the alltime best crime novelists, or novelist for any genre. His dialog is as good as it gets. You read his books and don't feel as though you're reading - it's more like you're living his stories. This 3 novel book is worth every penny. But if you really want to read a good one of his, try "Stick".

I'd only read Get Shorty before this compendium,
and I wanted to further explore Leonard's work (I
saw the movie before I read Get Shorty, so I felt
I'd tainted the experience). This collection turned out to
be just what I needed.

Leonard's characters sneak up on you from the edge of the
page. It's quite a feeling to realize that your
preconceptions about character development are
being ground under Leonard's bootheel. I guess my
next step is buying three more Leonard tales and
supergluing them together to regain that
back-to-back, slug-in-the-gut feeling. Thanks,
Elmore, from a fellow Michigander

i loved this book. there's so much in this book. the characters stay true to themselves and even give you a bit of a suprise at the end. i don't watn to spoil it for anyone..so i just want to say that it was a definite page turner. it starts out with the famous diver that witnesses a murder and then read the rest for yourself. it's great. what i loved about the book is that you don't know where it's going to take you...there are so many ways that it can go that you're not really sure how the characters will handle the situation. especially with the mysterious stranger that the diver befriends. you'll read into the night for the ending.

In this engaging, readable biogrpahy of the man Walker Percy called "the greatest crime writer of our time," biographer James E. Devlin follows sedulously the long career of Elmore Leonard. In stimulating fashion the author discusses Leonard's connection to pulp, the Western genre, crime literature, Hammett, Chandler, and George V. Higgins. This study is the definitive biography of Leonard a writer who deserves serious critical attention and gets it from Devlin--a professor of English Literature at State University, New York. --Andrew McAleer is the author of Appearance of Counsel and the assistant editor of the Rex Stout Journal.