I didn't become an Elmore Leonard fan until after he died, in 2013, and I read some obituaries, or retrospectives, such as this one, by Anthony Lane, and this one, by Joan Acocella, and it sounded to me like probably I would like these books, too. And I did--loved them. If you follow the above links, you'll see that among fans there is a difference of opinion about which books are his very finest. Lane votes for 52 Pick-Up, Swag, Stick, and LaBrava, all of which are from the front end of his career, the period a few years on either side of 1980. Acocella argues for a bell curve: she thinks he was honing his craft in the novels loved most by Lane, and that his five best--Glitz, Freaky Deaky, Get Shorty, Maximum Bob, and Out of Sight--were all produced in the decade or so running from the mid-80s to the mid-90s, after which the quality, though not the output, begins trailing off. For those who, like me, have been prohibited from having an opinion on this question, since I simply read Leonard's books as I found them checked in at the library and never formed an idea of what was written when, here are his novels in order of publication. I'm including only those belonging to the crime genre, which he took up in the late '60s after starting his career with some westerns.
The Big Bounce (1969)
Mr Majestyk (1974)
Fifty-two Pickup (1974)
Swag (1976)
Unknown Man No. 89 (1977)
The Hunted (1977)
The Switch (1978)
City Primeval (1980)
Gold Coast (1980)
Split Images (1981)
Cat Chaser (1982)
Stick (1983)
LaBrava (1983)
Glitz (1985)
Bandits (1987)
Freaky Deaky (1988)
Killshot (1989)
Get Shorty (1990)
Maximum Bob (1991)
Rum Punch (1992)
Pronto (1993)
Riding the Rap (1995)
Out of Sight (1996)
Cuba Libre (1998)
Be Cool (1999)
Pagan Babies (2000)
Tishomingo Blues (2002)
Mr Paradise (2004)
The Hot Kid (2005)
Comfort to the Enemy (2006)
Up in Honey's Room (2007)
Road Dogs (2009)
Djibouti (2010)
Raylan (2012)
A reasonable question might be: What was he doing from 1970 to 1973, drinking? I think the answer is that, after The Big Bounce, his debut crime novel, he wrote a few more westerns before turning for good to criminals in the mid-70s. Scanning the list and putting it together with my reaction to the ones I've read--thirteen of them--I think I'm inclined to favor Acocella's view, though soon as I say that I regret having shorted two of my favorites, The Switch and Stick. I just reread Swag (1976), according to Lane one of his best, and, while I thoroughly enjoyed it (again), I would make bold to put forward a couple of criticisms. The working women that Stick and Frank hang with poolside at the Villa Monterey apartments are not fully realized characters. They are introduced in chapter 5 and their thinness may perhaps be gauged by their stereotypical professions--a nurse, a schoolteacher, a dental hygienist, a cocktail waitress, a photographer's model, a hooker, and another model (part-time) who is also a kept woman. When they are later referred to by name, I found myself going back to chapter 5 to figure out which one was on stage now, and that's not something you usually have to do in Elmore Leonard novels. Moreover, one of them, the kept woman, has a very substantial role, and the feeling I get is that in the early scenes Leonard didn't have everything worked out yet and then at the end, when the outcome turns on a decision she makes, he didn't bother to go back and fill anything in, lift her out of the general mix. It's a version of the fourth act problem in Shakespeare, so-called because Dr Johnson thought he could detect a certain shoddiness in the latter portions of many of the plays, which he attributed to the playwright seeing the end and hurrying to it in order to "snatch his reward."
Two professional men making money, have to move on.
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