Toronto writer David Gilmour reviews Elmore Leonard's new
book MR. PARADISE in today's Globe and Mail. The URL is
ridiculously long, so here's a shorter pointer:
It's one of those "Leonard is a crime writer, but he's so
good it's literature, and these other literary figures agree"
revies.
| To appreciate the stature of Leonard's accomplishments,
have a look at
| his first crime novel, The Big Bounce, a splendid little
thing he wrote
| in 1969. Look what was popular at the time: John D.
MacDonald novels
| with that self-adoring gruffness of a right-wing editorial;
Ian
| Fleming's pleasant fantasizing; Ross Macdonald, metaphors
and similes so
| strained they bring the narrative to a halt. (Remember this
one from
| Sleeping Beauty: "An off shore oil rig stood up out of its
windward end
| like the metal handle of a dagger that had stabbed the
world and made it
| spill black blood.")
|
| Into all this comes Elmore Leonard with the story of a
small-time thief
| trying to get ahead. The Big Bounce revealed a curiously
literary
| quality in a writer working in the thriller genre.
Bill
-- William Denton : Toronto, Canada : http://www.miskatonic.org/ : Caveat lector.
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