Elmore Leonard: One Of The Best Writers?
Anthony Lane, in The New Yorker, says: “Elmore Leonard, who died on Monday, at the age of eighty-seven, was hailed as one of the best crime writers in the land. High praise, but not quite high enough, and some way off the mark. He was one of the best writers, and he happened to write about crime.” I wish I could agree. I guess I’m just not butch enough to enjoy the laconic, tough-guy niceties of Leonard’s style. I’ll live.
