Murder For Love

elmore leonard

Even with the respect finally granted to the art of the best mystery writers in recent years, it still has been rare for authors who write about violent crimes to be taken seriously by critics and sophisticated readers. Probably no crime or mystery writer in history has received the (deserved) acclaim of his contemporaries accorded El-more Leonard.

Hammett and Chandler were recognized for their powerful influence on American fiction only after they died. Ross Macdonald tasted it only near the end of his career. But for more than fifteen years, the most distinguished critics and the most popular and powerful cultural media have recognized the singular achievement of Elmore Leonard's unique prose style.

After years as a western writer (Hombre, The Tall T, Last Train to Yuma, among others), Leonard moved his stories into the present. He didn't change his style, which he describes by saying, "I try to leave out the parts that people skip, " but the subject matter, and he has enjoyed a string of more than a dozen consecutive bestsellers, including Bandits, Glitz, Maximum Bob, Pronto, and Riding the Rap.

This is Elmore Leonard's first short story in more than thirty years. (In a special fiction issue of The New Yorker two years ago, there was a superb piece by him, but it was an excerpt from Riding the Rap.) You will like some of the characters you are about to meet; happily, they will show up again in later work.

– O. P.