The first of a three-volume series on the late Elmore Leonard debuts Thursday from the prestigious nonprofit publisher Library of America. It’s edited by his longtime researcher, Gregg Sutter, a Detroit native now based in Los Angeles.
Julie Hinds reports in the Free Press that the Library of America’s mission is to gather and keep printing authoritative versions of America’s best, most important writers.
Leonard, who died last year, was consulted on the project and belongs to an elite group within the full Library of America catalog.
“Elmore, at the time he signed the contracts for the project, he was one of only four living writers who ever got this honor from the Library of America,” says Sutter.
The first volume, “Elmore Leonard: Four Novels of the 1970s,” has these crime sagas that linked him inexorably with Detroit:
■ “The Switch” (1978), the basis for the new movie “Life of Crime” with Jennifer Aniston.
■ “Fifty-Two Pickup,” the brutal 1974 tale of a Detroit businessman whose affair entraps him in a blackmail scheme.
■ “Swag,” a 1976 shift to a comic gear that focuses on the get-rich-quick hopes of a car salesman and a thief.
■ “Unknown Man No. 89,” an intricate 1977 story of a tough process server who’s immersed in a deadly game of deceptions.
Which writers influenced Leonard? Sutter, his researcher and friend, talked to the Library of America:
Ernest Hemingway had the most profound influence on Elmore. He studied Hemingway intensely when learning to write and well beyond, saying he always could pick up a Hemingway story and be inspired. But Hemingway lacked a sense of humor, according to Elmore. He found the natural humor he sought in the work of Richard Bissell. Finally, in the early 1970s, he read the work of George Higgins, which had a liberating effect on his writing, especially showing Elmore how to tell a story with dialogue alone.
