A great figure in the crime fiction genre has died earlier this week in writer
Elmore Leonard.
A monster talent with success in writing for novels and some even later adapted in movies (I read he thought "Get Shorty" was one of the best efforts of transferring his novel to the big screen) and television (I'm a steady viewer of "Justified"), Leonard enjoyed a long writing career.
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Elmore Leonard
(photo from Google) |
From the library's catalog under his "Raylan" book is the
Author & Notes Sketches entry which reads:
Elmore John Leonard, Jr., popularly known as mystery and western writer Elmore
Leonard, was born in New Orleans, Louisiana on October 11, 1925. He served in
the United States Naval Reserve from 1943 to 1946. He received a Ph.D. in
English from the University of Detroit in 1950. After graduating, he wrote short
stories and western novels as well as advertising and education film scripts. In
1967, he began to write full-time and received several awards including the 1977
Western Writers of America award and the 1984 Writers of America Edgar Allan Poe
award. His other works include
Get Shorty, Out of Sight, Hombre, Mr. Majestyk,
3:10 to Yuma, and Rum Punch. Many of his works were adapted into movies. He
successfully conquered alcoholism in the 1970s; details of his struggle with the
bottle appear in author Dennis Wholey's 1986 book The Courage to Change. His
title Raylan made The New York Times Best Seller List in 2012. Library of
America recently announced plans to publish the first of a three-volume
collection of his books beginning in the Fall of 2014. Leonard died on August
20, 2013 from complications of a stroke he had earlier. He was 87 years old.
(Bowker Author Biography)
For a list of the library's holdings for Leonard (including novels, books on CD, movies, etc.), click
here.
