Elmore Leonard Books

In the weeks before the prison at Yuma shuts down, two convicts abruptly knock heads -- Raymond, a frustrated Apache, and a laid-back former buffalo soldier named Harold Jackson.

They're the only non-whites in the pen and, after a dust up in the mess hall, they simply just do not like each other. Their animosity, however, has actually been engineered by jailed outlaw Frank Shelby, who runs a thriving black market racket behind bars with the air of royalty.

Will Raymond and Harold -- two strong-backed, decent-hearted outsiders surrounded by enemies -- ever unite and direct their hate toward the bad guys who really deserve it? That, of course, seems utterly impossible ....

This is the first of Leonard's many Westerns I've read. I'm used to his stories playing out in contemporary Miami or Detroit, and singing with back-and-forth dialogue. "Forty Lashes," obviously, resides in a different time and place - the Arizona desert at the dawn of the 20th Century. Fans of Leonard's contemporary crime fiction, however, will be pleased to find that even in his early days he knew how to structure a bent caper, how to give his characters conversations that feel overheard and how to add his unique spin to the proceedings.

I won't spoil one big twist, except to say that it involves two particularly unsatisfying changes of wardrobes, for lack of a better phrase. These feel awkwardly depicted, dated and ill-conceived, but that's more of a speed bump than a roadblock. No matter what you think of the costumes and the spear-throwing, its hard to deny the fast paperback pleasures of this short, tough, speedy little horse opera.

Though written over 20 years ago, this Leonard novel crackles with crisp ,lively characters that made the old west, young, raw and exciting.
It is an easy and entertaining read...

I am a Leonard fan, have 42 of his books now.
The western novels and stories are great, so are the stories in this book.
The atmosphere, creative plots, the characters....truely good.

Forty Lashes Less One is a great story. Two prisoners, Chiricahua Raymond San Carlos and a black man Harold Jackson are in Yuma prison for murder. At first they are bitter enemies but the warden puts them in an experiment to see if a training routine of long distance running can be used for rehabilatation. And then the warden sends them after 5 mean dangerous men. The trail is rough and bloody but they are sucessfull. As soon as they bring these men in they tell the warden to kiss !!! . A great story, you'll love it.

I have gotten hooked on Leonard's earlier works. His sense of timing and character development are excellent.

He is a great story teller. His subject matter is always plausible. He takes average everyday people and makes them interesting characters.

Imagine every Western you've ever seen or read composited into a generic plot, then spit out in some unique form involving a specific place called Randado and a guy named Kirby Frye who just happens to be babyfaced. Do you really care, still? This book isn't bad, it's mediocre. There is no reason to pick it up over another generic Western. The text is periodically amusing, usually easy to read, and sometimes expressive, but the story is devoid of meaning and not all that interesting except to someone who needs to read a generic Western right now or they'll die. I wouldn't recommend this book to a paper pulper.

In Elmore Leonard's, Law at Rendado, a young deputy loses two of his prisoners to a rich man's lynch mob - and finds a fight worth dying for. Another 5 stars for E.L.

Kirby Frye is a young Deputy Sheriff but he has a lot of guts. Men are dragged from his jail and hanged while he is out of town. When he goes after the men who did it they humiliate him. The second time he goes after them they take off his shoes and make him walk out of town. THAT WAS A MISTAKE!!! Phil Sundeen has all the men, power and money and he thinks Frye will keep on going. Sundeen has always done what ever he wanted to do, but that is about to come to an end. He uses his own tough men plus a hired gun but to no avail. The story is about Fryes tracking the men responsible and has a lot of action in it. It shows that Frye is human and can make mistakes. I liked the character of Dandy Jim. A quick read, very good western that will hold your attention.

Leonard's lawman in this tale is a youngster whose fortitude remains internal and gives no hint of itself to the young sheriff's adversaries. As a result, they are prone to humiliating him whenever there is opportunity. But it is their ignorance of what constitutes strength that makes them blind to the perseverance of the youth and his solid belief to uphold the law. A nice and easy read from beginning to end.

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.
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!

Elmore Leonard is the reigning master of crime fiction. Earlier, he established himself as a worthy inheritor of the mantle of the masters of western fiction: Zane Grey and Louis L'Amour. This novel is one of his best and cries out for a film treatment. If I could option it, I would. A great read on a trip to Africa.

Leonard is a great writer, I love his stories. At times you have to pay very close attention to what he is saying or you might get lost. Leonard is not the type of writer to tell you over and over again what he wants to tell you just so he can get in a few more lines. Often times I have to reread a page because I was not paying attention. In 5 Shadows the main character, Corey Bowen keeps trying to escape the prison, thus my title to this review. Corey is going to get help from a lady who has murder on her mind. After his freedom he then settles some scores permanently. A very good book.

I have read several westerns by Leonard, this is the worst one I have read. Corey Bowen is trying to escape from the prison camp Five Shadows. He tries and is caught but does he give up, NO. He lives to try again. Page after page is spent talking about the escape. A girl he has seen one time, Karla Demery, likes his looks and contacts an Attorney to see if he will help him. The Attorney agrees and has a new trial set up when Bowen tries another break out. The big villian is Frank Renda who is in charge of the prison. He and his side kick will shoot you for nothing and call it an attempted excape. The book was slow, I found my self wanting to skim pages to just get it over with. If this happenes to be the first Leonard book you have read don't think they are all like this one. He does write some good westerns.

A palpable sense of dread hangs over Paul Cable and his family, (and this book), and it is so well written that one truly has no idea what to expect next.

Leonard is The Master of describing peaceful men with extremely violent abilities, driven (by persistent evil men) to take sudden, brutal action.

The 2-star reviewer is badly mistaken...(perhaps he just watched the movie).

LS at SR is not Leonard's best. After reading Valdez and Hombre, I was disappointed that the dialogue was not as vivid as those two. Characters were a little generic too. In fact, you might call this one a little formulaic. Your typical western justice type novel.

Paul Cable survives the civil war to find out someone has taken over his little ranch. It takes all of his wit and ability, determination and guts to fight back so he and his family can finally live. Leonard is a great writer. The person who rated this poorly should open his eyes and mind when he reads.

These two stories are taken unabridged from a larger collection of Elmore Leondard short stories called "The Tonto Woman and Other Western Stories".

Both stories last about 45 minutes each. The entire package consists of one audio cassette lasting about one and one-half hours. They are read by veteran television actors James Naughton and Dylan Baker.

I thought that "The Colonel's Lady" had a pretty good twist to it but was a bit slow. I would give it three stars. On the other hand, I enjoyed "No Man's Guns" and give it five stars. That makes an average of four stars.

These two stories are taken unabridged from a larger collection of Elmore Leondard short stories called "The Tonto Woman and Other Western Stories".

Both stories last about 45 minutes each. The entire package consists of one audio cassette lasting about one and one-half hours. They are read by veteran television actors James Naughton and Dylan Baker.

I thought that "The Colonel's Lady" had a pretty good twist to it but was a bit slow. I would give it three stars. On the other hand, I enjoyed "No Man's Guns" and give it five stars. That makes an average of four stars.

This collection of short stories was culled from the hardcover COMPLETE WESTERN STORIES OF ELMORE LEONARD.

The stories covered in this volume range from that of a Mexican deputy sheriff discovering the true face of old West justice to an Indian attack on an isolated stagecoach station to the quandry a widowed rancher finds himself in when he realizes his new lady love has a checkered past.

I enjoyed the short stories in this book more than those found in the companion BLOOD MONEY AND OTHER STORIES paperback. There are fewer stories in this volume. They're longer in length and therein lies the difference. That extra length allows Leonard to plug more background, color and details into the stories and their characters. The stories still need work, however, in recreating that authentic feel of the old West.

Good reading for Western fans.

In case you didn't know, this book is actually written by several Florida authors, each contributing a chapter and taking the story where they so choose. I believe it was originally published in a magazine, with each author submitting the next installment of the story. The first is Dave Barry and the final is Carl Hiaasen with several other prime examples of Floridian writing genius in between.

This book covers the bases when it comes to Florida humor, taking place in Miami, we have nature lovers, skin divers, lawyers, police, Castro Impersonators, drug dealers, hit men, famous actors, and of course Castro himself. Throw in a couple of severed heads and a manatee with an identity crisis and you have an entertaining 201 pages.

The manner of the writing of this book leads to characters making drastic personality changes, some characters not getting a proper ending, and lots of laughter all around. The writing styles vary from chapter to chapter, some more focused on plot than others, but I recommend this book to anyone looking for a short entertaining read that they don't want to invest a lot into.

I confess that, although I read Elmo Leonard's earlier novels, the ones set in Detroit and Miami, as soon as they came off the press, I somewhat lost interest in his Hollywood-period stories, because they simply didn't seem as gripping -- too formulaic. But "Mr. Paradise" is once again set in my hometown, and it's so fine, it makes me want to throw my head back and bray!

It may be that I simply identify with the locale, but it seems to me that the situations and events depicted herein are just as true of any decaying city in the USA -- which, I suppose, means every big city. Leonard is thus an artist who has captured urban America as precisely and unmistakably as Steinbeck did with rural California or Faulkner with Mississippi or Zola in France. But unlike those writers, Leonard dispenses with the baroque ornamentation and excursus, the excessive description and reflection, and clinically focuses on the open sore. The plot thus advances like a late freight, faster than you are able to turn the pages, and you don't dare skip so much as a sentence.

The national periodicals have celebrated the realistic dialogue of such writers as Tom Wolfe and Richard Price, but them guys is amateurs compared to the Dutchman. He not only has a superb ear for the spoken word, but the rhythms are likewise perfect. He's the best by far and bar none. It's the way people speak and behave here and now, and his books should be placed in time capsules -- or shot into space (if nothing else, as a caution to extraterrestrials to avoid this place).

It is my glad duty to report that everything depicted is exactly as he describes -- from the locations of gas stations to the interiors of bars. The gang names are real (e.g., the Cash Flow Posse), and believe me, the citizenry is genuinely that stupid.

There's also a joke contained in the novel that no one has noted. Avern Cohen, an attorney who's one of the villains, is a real person who's a local attorney. (When I was 23, he came and bailed me out of jail, but he was mad because I then took my parents' advice and pled guilty -- kids, never listen to your parents.) But unlike the Murder-Inc. boss of that name in the novel, the real Avern Cohen went on to be appointed a judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. He resides not too far from Leonard's home in the northern suburbs. I guess that's kinda cool to write your neighbor into a best-selling novel.

This is Elmore Leonard's best book since "Maximum Bob" in 1993. Leonard is amazing. He was 79 years old when this book was published, yet his crackling writing style, his imaginative plotting, and his unerring ear for dialogue are as keen as ever. He returns to his native Detroit, a frequent setting for his novels, for this one. The plot need not be revealed here lest it be spoiled for a prospective reader. Suffice it to say that there is an array of colorful characters: call girls, high priced lingerie models, mobsters, bumbling hired killers, interesting supporting characters, and of course police detectives. An excellent read for anyone.

Elmore Leonard is the man behind two of the best films of the 1990's - Get Shorty and Jackie Brown - but this one falls pitifully short of those standards. He probably wrote it faster than I could read it !

So the author demands respect, he's up there with the greats but "Mr Paradise" is not the book he will be best remembered for. It's about two girls, Chloe and Kelly, who spend an evening with a wealthy man (Mr Paradise) at his mansion for the sole purpose of entertaining him in whatever way he chooses, and they know they will get highly paid for it. But something goes terribly wrong, and two people end up dead. Much of the ensuing story relates to why Mr P was killed, and who will benefit in his last will and testament.

This is a very 'talky' novel, not what I had expected from an author who has in the past been so skilled at describing the atmosphere of places and events, and the way that different and often interesting characters inter-act with each other. This story, by comparison, is lacking in that famous Elmore Leonard spirit, it's a by-the-numbers account of an investigation into a contract killing and one in which the cop falls for the beautiful key witness, his first romantic encounter since the death of his wife a year or two earlier. Ho-hum. Nothing radical here, it reads like a kind of soap opera or TV movie, and it would be sad if you buy this book and form an impression of the writer if this is to be your first encounter with him. Believe me, he's much, much better than this. Try Rum Punch to see what I mean.

This is around the 12th or 13th Leonard novel I've read, and it's been several years since I really enjoyed one from start to finish. Happily, his latest Detroit-set caper is pitch perfect and a ton of fun. Things kick off with typical Leonard oddballness: retired and ultra-wealthy lawyer Mr. Paradiso likes to watch tapes of old University of Michigan football games, and pays an escort $5,000 a month to dress up as a topless UM cheerleader for these sessions. One night she talks her model roommate into coming along for a special twin cheerleader session, and of course that's the night two hit men come to whack Mr. Paradiso.

As in so many of Leonard's books, the criminals don't really have their acts together. The hit was supposed to be called off for the night, but the hit man's wife didn't pass along the message, and so the escort is added to the body count, complicating things. However, things get even more complicated when the old man's personal assistant strong-arms the model into swapping identities with the dead escort -- and soon Detective Frank Delsa is on the scene, smelling a rat. It's one of those crime capers where the suspense comes not from knowing who did what (that's all cut and dried), but how it's all going to play out, and how Delsa is going to put the pieces together. There's a host of highly entertaining and distinctive supporting characters, including the two hit men, a smalltime snitch, the assistant, an seemingly-decrepit butler, Paradiso's family, and a crooked lawyer.

The plotting is both intricate and seemingly effortless, as the story unfurls in a breezy, unhurried tone with plenty of humor and violence. Tonally, it's very very similar to "Out of Sight", with everyone playing angles, the cop who knows what's what but is letting it play out, and the flirty romance between Delsa and the model, and plenty of sly dialogue. It's nice to see the master can still knock one out of the park.

With Elmore Leonard, you usually know what you are going to get. Leonard's trademark is crisp and witty dialogue, unusual characters, and a plot that reveals itself in surprising ways. This book is no exception. It is not one of his most intriguing works - I found the storyline a little more predictable than normal for Leonard - but it is still a very worthwhile read.

If you are an Elmore Leonard fan, you will enjoy this book. If you have never read Leonard's work, I would recommend starting with Get Shorty, Rum Punch, or Pagan Babies first and come back to this one.

That Elmore Leonard has kept writing the same kind of novels for over 40 years is impressive. What's amazing is that, far from losing a step or getting stale, he's finding new ways to deliver the goods.

At one level, 2002's "Tishomingo Blues" is another story about a guy who more or less wanders blindly into the midst of a deadly game. But the setting, the characters, and a surprisingly dense thicket of a plot all conspire to surprise even the most jaded of Dutch's readers, while entertaining most everyone else.

Dennis Lenahan is a professional high diver who routinely plunges from 80 feet in the air into a tub of water that looks more like a half-dollar coin from Lenahan's perspective. When Lenahan executes one such dive after witnessing the murder of his vagrant assistant at a Mississippi casino and resort, it impresses an onlooker named Robert Taylor, a Detroit drug-runner who wants to break into the Dixie Mafia.

Taylor's hardly what you'd call a level customer, but his admiration for Lenahan is genuine. "How many people you know can do what he does?" he asks his lady, Anne.

"He ever saw what you get into he'd die of fright," Anne replies.

Dennis gets a good look when Robert decides to make him his partner, whether Dennis wants to or no. Robert is the kind of guy who talks up his great-grandfather being lynched for talking to a white woman, then makes a point of being a Civil War re-enactor - for the South, riding for Nathan Bedford Forrest, no less. Or at least the guy who is acting the part of Forrest, and who also is connected to the Dixie Mafia in a big way. Watching Robert push buttons like he does is to feel Dennis's dilemma about staying on the right side of the law.

It's the same with Leonard. He sets up a great story with an assortment of odd characters, an offbeat premise, and tangy dialogue. There's even a nice use around the theme of crossroads, as Robert tells Dennis the story of how bluesman Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil for the gift of music (and never looked back, as Taylor tells it), while the big payoff takes place around the reenactment of Brice's Crossroads, Forrest's greatest victory. The "blues" of the title thus refer both to music and the color uniform Dennis unhappily finds himself in as the bad stuff goes down.

"Tishamingo" fades toward the end a bit as things pan out a bit pat, including a shoehorned romance for Dennis. But the moral ambiguity at the story's center remains firm, providing both the most entertainment and lingering food for thought in this dense but never dull book.

Leonard readers may notice the Indian pitcher Chickasaw Charlie Hoke also appears in Leonard's other 2002 book, "When The Women Come Out To Dance", in the short story bearing his name. Another short from that collection, "Fire In The Hole", details the story of what happened to the Temple of the Cool and Beautiful J.C., a storefront church and marijuana clearinghouse Robert tells Dennis about here.

It's nice catching those connections, especially if you're like me and want to read more Leonard first chance you get.

This book was so bad, I sped thru reading it just to be done with it. It's poorly written, poorly thought out...just garbage basically...in content & form. Hated it! And he gets even worse marks for trying to write about/in a southern dialect because not only was it incorrect, but terribly inconsistent!

I am a huge Elmore Leonard fan, having read nearly all of his books, and Tishomingo is hands down my favorite novel that Leonard has written.

[...]

Cool. That's Elmore Leonard. Not kid cereal cool, or Saturday morning cartoon cool, or Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure cool; but Cool. The kind of pure, simple Cool that runs like a knowing thread from blues to bebop to beat, Hank to Johnny to Waylon, quintessentially American Cool.

And if Cool is the man, then Cool must be the man's world: spotting Cool, playing Cool, being Cool enough to get someone to blow their cool. The man's men and women either have it or don't. And woe be those who don't.

Cool backs the action in Tishomingo Blues, Sir Elmore's 37th (count 'em) romp through the mythology of American Crime. It is a mythology he has played a large part in creating.

Foresaking his hometown of Detroit ("Cleveland without the glitter") and his much made of mean Miami streets, Leonard descends into a Delta almost as foreign - and as brutal - as the Rwanda of his brilliant Pagan Babies. The place: Tunica County, Mississippi, a big muddy swim from Arkansas, where poverty is next to Godliness. Or used to be anyway, before the casinos came a callin'. Now that there's gambling in them thar hills things have taken on a whole new meanin' - money. And with the grab bag comes the crooks, kooks and otherwise exploitative characters.

And oh what a terrific blend of high-living low life. In no particular order Tishomingo Blues boasts a weathered - but Cool - carny high diver; a slick, smooth and crafty D-Town hustler (Cool, natch); a poor honest soul made whole by unlucky love and Jenny Crank diet plans; a half-bit ex-con former Sheriff's Deputy and his inbred Dixie Mafia sidekicks; an Outfit chieftain and his two-timing trophy girl; and last but never least, Chickasaw Charlie, a once dim light of big league backlots, who makes a sore point of providing innocuous running commentary from his low rent hustler's perch - a pitching cage.

Then of course there's action, brass-white-knuckled action. Leonard pits the cornbread Cosa Nostra against the breakaway Motor City mobsters on a field reenactment of some obscure Civil War battle and creates another a showdown worthy of Peckinpah.

Come to think of it, it's a wonder Peckinpah never made motion picture magic of Leonard's work - nearly everyone else has. Frankenheimer, Ferrara, Tarentino, and Soderbergh are but a few who struck celluloid gold filming Leonard's more modern shoot 'em ups. While any of the early wild westerns - 3:10 To Yuma (Glenn Ford, 1957), Hombre (Paul Newman, '67) and Joe Kidd (Clint Eastwood, '72) - are the stuff of gunslinger legend.

In Tishomingo Blues, the legend continues, a legend of lives lived hard and fast. In fact, bluesman Robert Taylor (after the "Homes" in Chicago?) talkin' about Roy Scheider doing Bob Fosse in All That Jazz, best sums-up the Leonard legend as thus: "the man living every minute of his life till his very way of living kills him. Beautiful."

In an America where bootstraps conceal pistols and Horatio Alger robs banks, Leonard is the perfect chronicler, the master mindful of the various shades of grey, but determined to keep the fight between black and white. What's cool is that Leonard's patented brand of black and white fight is not a brawl between good and evil but between smart and dumb, an angle that provides hope to bad guys everywhere.

Perhaps this is why Leonard is without question the con's favorite author. Not only does he know cons - how they move, how they think, and especially how they speak - he knows too that not all cons are bad. In other words, he's not afraid to let a bad guy win every once in awhile; providing of course they keep their Cool.

Let me start by saying that I am an Elmore Leonard fan. I have read most of his novels. This is one of his best. This novel is filled with the strange characters common to Leonard's repertoire. The writing is crisp and lively as always. I think the plot of this book is one of the most intriguing of all the Elmore Leonard novels. This is a must read.