New Bio Spotlights Criminally Cool Author Elmore Leonard

He’s been referred to by the rather unwieldy sobriquet of “The Master of Contemporary American Crime Fiction.” And many critics and readers have agreed that he’s a worthy heir to the hardboiled fiction of scribes like James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and Jim Thompson.

But the more apt description that’s often laid on him is “The Dickens of Detroit.”

That’s because for decades, Elmore Leonard churned out scores of novels, short stories, screenplays, and even non-fiction chronicling the underbelly of underworld activities. His work is noted for his use of realistic and hard-hitting dialogue. And (perhaps as a nod to his literary hero, Ernest Hemingway) never using ten words to describe something when three will do just fine .

He's probably best known in the wider cultur