Elmore Leonard

At 87 years old, Elmore Leonard has this physical status:

Leonard had his first success in 1951 when Argosy published the short story "Trail of the Apaches.": 29  During the 1950s and early 1960s, he continued writing Westerns, publishing more than 30 short stories. He wrote his first novel, The Bounty Hunters, in 1953 and followed this with four other novels. His western novels had already begun to show his fondness for culturally diverse outsiders and underdogs. He often developed his characters through dialogue, each defined by means of their speech. For many of his stories he favored Arizona and New Mexico settings. Five of his westerns were turned into major movies before 1972: The Tall T (Randolph Scott), 3:10 to Yuma (Glenn Ford), Hombre (Paul Newman), Valdez Is Coming (Burt Lancaster), and Joe Kidd (Clint Eastwood).

In 1969, his first crime story titled The Big Bounce was published by Gold Medal Books. Leonard was different from the well-known names writing in this genre, such as Raymond Chandler or any of the other famous noir writers – no melodrama and pessimism, but more interested in his characters and in realistic dialogue. The stories were often located in Detroit but apart from his favorite setting he also liked to use South Florida as a setting. LaBrava, a novel set there published in 1983, was also the occasion for a New York Times review, in which Leonard moved from mystery suspense short story writer to novelist. His next book, an Atlantic City gambling story published in 1985 and titled Glitz, was his breakout in the crime genre. It spent 16 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list. Other crime novels that followed were all bestsellers, as well. In his review of Glitz, Stephen King placed him in the same company as John D. MacDonald, Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, but Leonard himself felt more influenced by Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck. Leonard believed that his books during the 1980s were becoming more humorous and that he was developing a style that was more free and easy. His own favorites were the Dixie Mafia story Tishomingo Blues from 2002 and Freaky Deaky from 1988 about ex-hippie criminals. Some characters appear in several novels, including mobster Chili Palmer, bank robber Jack Foley and the U. S. Marshals Carl Webster and Raylan Givens. His crime books were published amongst others by Fawcett Publications, Bantam Books and Dell Publishing. In the 1980s his publisher was Arbor House, later also William Morrow & Company as an imprint of HarperCollins. There are different reprints of his novels; in the 2000s these included editions from Weidenfeld & Nicolson. At the time of his death his novels had sold tens of millions of copies.

Among film adaptations of his work are Jackie Brown (starring Pam Grier, directed by Quentin Tarantino) which is a "homage to the author's trademark rhythm and pace"; Get Shorty (1995, John Travolta and Gene Hackman); Out of Sight (1998, George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez, directed by Steven Soderbergh) and the television series Justified. Nearly thirty movies were made from Leonard's novels, but for some critics his special style worked only in print.

Source

• 1984 Edgar Award for Best Mystery Novel of 1983 for LaBrava.
• 1992 Grand Master Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Mystery Writers of America
• 2008 F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Award for outstanding achievement in American literature; received during the 13th Annual F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference held at Montgomery College in Rockville, Maryland, United States.
• 2010 Peabody Award, FX's Justified
• 2012 National Book Award, Medal for Distinguished Contribution