Elmore Leonard, The 'Dickens Of Detroit,' Dies At 87
The writer Elmore Leonard has died. He was 87 years old and had recently suffered a stroke.
For decades, Leonard — working at the very top of his profession as a crime writer — had been widely acclaimed, and universally read. He published 46 novels, which resulted in countless movie and TV adaptations, including the movies Out of Sight and Get Shorty and the TV series Justified.
Leonard lived in Bloomfield Village, just outside Detroit, and in his library, he kept a copy of every book he ever wrote. Most of them are about robbery and mayhem, people chasing after bags of money, but he started as a Western writer, with Bounty Hunter in 1953. He wrote the first draft by hand — he never stopped doing that — using canary yellow pads that a local printer always made for him:
"And I've been using this paper ever since I left the ad agency where they used these pads," Leonard said in a 2010 interview.
“ People ask me about my dialogue, I say, 'Don't you hear people talking?' That's all I do.