8 Best 「elmore leonard」 Books of 2024| Books Explorer
52 Pickup is a rip-roaring thriller from master of crime fiction Elmore Leonard, the New York Times bestselling author of Raylan, Get Shorty, Killshot, and other novels of suspense.Detroit businessman Harry Mitchell has had only one affair in his twenty-two years of happy matrimony. Unfortunately, someone caught his indiscretion on film and now wants Harry to fork over one hundred grand to keep his infidelity a secret. And if Harry doesn’t pay up, the blackmailer and his associates plan to press a lot harder—up to and including homicide, if necessary.But the psychos picked the wrong pigeon for their murderous scam. Because Harry Mitchell doesn’t get mad...he gets even.
This "brilliant caper" (New York Times) from bestselling author Elmore Leonard is a rollicking tale of modern urban crime featuring a cast of small-time criminals with big-time dreams.Ernest Stickley Jr. figures his luck's about to change when Detroit used-car salesman Frank Ryan catches him trying to boost a ride from Ryan's lot. Frank's got some surefire schemes for getting rich quick—all of them involving guns—and all Stickley has to do is follow "Ryan's Rules" to share the wealth.But sometimes rules need to be bent, maybe even broken to succeed in the world of crime, especially when the "brains" of the operation knows less than nothing.
“No one is Leonard’s equal,” declares the Chicago Tribune—and anyone who might doubt it would only have to read Elmore Leonard’s riveting noir classic, Unknown Man #89, to become a true believer.The twisty tale of a Detroit process server whose search for a missing stockholder leads him into more serious peril than he ever imagined possible, Unknown Man #89 is a gourmet stew of mystery, suspense, and double and triple cross, peppered with the razor sharp dialogue for which Grand Master Leonard is justifiably famous.Exhilarating old-school crime fiction that the late, great John D. MacDonald, Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, and Robert Parker would have been proud to call their own, Unknown Man #89 is a gem—nothing less than we’d expect from the man who created the incomparable U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens of the hit TV series Justified.
“A little beauty of a story….A hot, fast read with pungent characters.”—Los Angeles Times“A slam-bang, no-bull action thriller…and nobody but nobody writes better dialogue.”—New York Daily NewsIt’s an established fact: Elmore Leonard is “the uncontested master of the crime thriller” (Washington Post ) who “does crime fiction better than anyone” (Cleveland Plain Dealer), and nowhere is this more obvious than in the pages of Stick. One of his most acclaimed noir masterworks, it is the story of ex-con Ernest “Stick” Stickley who’s nudged from the straight-and-narrow path when a big time drug dealer randomly selects him to die and a perfect revenge/payday opportunity presents itself. The author of Raylan, featuring U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, the sometimes trigger-happy protagonist of TV’s Justified, Leonard is indeed the king, holding court with the best of the best, including Coban and Connally, and the late great John D. MacDonald, Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, and Robert B. Parker.
New York Times bestselling author Elmore Leonard delivers his trademark blend of action, sex, violence, humor, and hard-boiled suspense in this thrilling crime classic, LaBrava.Joe La Brava is an ex–Secret Service agent who gets mixed up in a South Miami Beach scam involving a redneck former cop, a Cuban hit man who moonlights as a go-go dancer, and a one-time movie queen whose world is part make-believe, part deadly dangerous.Fast-moving, pitch-perfect, and utterly irresistible, LaBrava is, “vintage Leonard: a blend of the true-to-life and the totally make-believe, the cinematic and the suspenseful, the world we know and a whole lot of worlds we’re glad we don’t. Only Leonard can concoct such a potent cocktail.” (USA Today).
“Intense….A higher caliber of entertainment.”—New York TimesElmore Leonard’s Glitz is a killer…in the best possible way. “The King Daddy of crime writers” (Seattle Times) electrifies with this unputdownable noir tale of a mama’s boy psycho killer with a vendetta against a Miami cop. A cat-and-mouse tale with claws, Glitz is thrilling, frightening, explosive, surprising, everything a great thriller is supposed to be—superior crime fiction the genre’s late greats, John D. MacDonald, Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, et al, would have been proud to call their own. Elmore Leonard, the creator of magnificent mayhem and truly unforgettable characters—like U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens of the hit TV series Justified—is at his nail-biting, page-turning best with Glitz which Stephen King in the New York Times Book Review calls, “Smashing and satisfying.”
Loan shark Chili Palmer didn't say anything when Ray Bones stole his leather jacket from Vesuvio's in Miami. He just went to Ray's house, broke his nose, took the jacket, and left. Twelve years later, on account of his boss getting whacked, Chili finds himself working for Bones and ordered to collect on a bad debt from Leo Devoe, a guy who died in a plane crash. But it turns out Leo isn't dead; he's in Las Vegas with the $300,000 the airline paid to his wife. So Chili follows him to Vegas and then on to Hollywood, where he hooks up with movie producers, actors, and studio execs. Getting Leo becomes a movie pitch unfolding in a city where every move you make is a potential scene, and making it big isn't all that different from making your bones: You gotta know who to pitch, who to hit, and how to knock 'em dead.
A character so outrageous he could only have come from the ingenious imagination of Elmore Leonard, lewd, lecherous, law-bending Florida jurist Judge Robert “Maximum Bob” Gibbs has been judged guilty by a grudge-bearing malefactor and sentenced to death—by alligator, if necessary. Maximum Bob is a delightfully dark classic thriller from “the greatest crime writer of our time, perhaps ever” (New York Times Book Review), and any reader who loved getting gleefully lost in criminal mayhem of Get Shorty, Rum Punch, Out of Sight, The Hot Kid, or any number of the inimitable Leonard’s numerous crime fiction masterworks will get maximum enjoyment out of this one.