Showing results by author "Elmore Leonard" in All Categories

The hero of Cat Chaser, George Moran, isn't looking for trouble but finds it anyway when he winds up in bed with the wife of a drug-dealing mob-connected Dominican cop - vicious, macho and ready to follow George to the ends of the earth, which in this case means Miami.

Trust was rare and precious in the wide-open towns that sprung up like weeds on America's frontier - with hustlers and hucksters arriving in droves by horse, coach, wagon, and rail, and gunmen working both sides of the law, all too eager to end a man's life with a well-placed bullet. The New York Times best-selling grand master of suspense deftly displays the other side of his genius, with seven classic Western tales of destiny and fatal decision...and trust as essential to survival as it is hard-earned. 

Vincent Majestyk saw too much death in the jungles of Southeast Asia. All he wants to do now is farm his melons and forget. But peace can be an elusive commodity, even in the Arizona hinterlands - and especially when the local mob is calling all the shots. And one quiet, proud man's refusal to be strong-armed by a powerful hood is about to start a violent chain reaction that will leave Mr. Majestyk ruined, in shackles, and without a friend in the world -- except for one tough and beautiful woman.

World-class gentleman felon Jack Foley is busting out of Florida's Glades Prison when he runs head on into a shotgun-wielding Karen Sisco. Suddenly he's sharing a cramped car trunk with the classy, disarmed federal marshal and the chemistry is working overtime - and as soon as she escapes, he's already missing her. But there are bad men and a major score waiting for Jack in Motown. And the next time his path crosses Karen's, chances are she's going to be there for business, not pleasure.

The smallest of small-time criminals, 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, if one is to succeed in the world of crime, especially if the "brains" of the operation knows less than nothing.

Carl Webster, the hot kid of the marshals service, is polite, respects his elders, and can shoot a man driving away in an Essex at 400 yards. Carl works out of the Tulsa, Oklahoma, federal courthouse during the 1930s, the period of America's most notorious bank robbers: Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson...those guys.

In this first collection of short pieces, including two novella-length works, since his western anthology Tonto Woman, Leonard demonstrates the superb characterization, dead-on dialogue, vivid atmosphere, and driving plotting that have made him a household name. 

With the closing of the Harlan County, Kentucky coalmines, marijuana has become the biggest cash crop in the state. A hundred pounds of it can gross three-hundred thousand dollars, but that’s chump change compared to the quarter million a human body can get you - especially when it’s sold off piece-by-piece. So when Dickie and Coover Crowe, dope-dealing brothers known for sampling their own supply, decide to branch out into the body business, it’s up to U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens to stop them.

Things are going along okay with Dennis' gig at the Tishomingo Lodge & Casino in Tunica, Mississippi, "the Casino Capital of the South", until the day he looks down from the high-dive platform and witnesses a mob hit, Dixie style.

War in Cuba isn't Ben Tyler's concern. Still, sailing mares and guns into Havana harbor in 1898 - right past the submerged wreckage of the U.S. battleship Maine - may not be the smartest thing the recently prison-sprung horse wrangler ever did. Neither is shooting one of the local Guardia, though the pompous peacock deserved it. Now Tyler's sitting tight in a vermin-infested Cuban stockade waiting to face a firing squad....

Dual Meaders, Doc Taulbee, and their gang of city slickers set out to steal thousands of dollars worth of homemade Kentucky Whiskey from Son Martin, a hell-raising country boy, during the midst of Prohibition.

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.

Clement Mansell knows how easy it is to get away with murder. The seriously crazed killer is already back on the Detroit streets - thanks to some nifty courtroom moves by his crafty looker of a lawyer - and he's feeling invincible enough to execute a crooked Motown judge on a whim. Homicide Detective Raymond Cruz thinks the "Oklahoma Wildman" crossed the line long before this latest outrage, and he's determined to see that the hayseed psycho does not slip through the legal system's loopholes a second time.

The sequel to Chili Palmer's hit movie Get Leo tanked, and now Chili's itching for a comeback. So when a power-lunch with record label executive and former associate Tommy Athens ends in a mob hit, he soon finds himself in an unlikely alliance with organized crime detective Darryl Holmes and the likely next target of Russian gangsters. But where others see danger, Chili Palmer sees story possibilities.

After serving time for armed robbery, Ernest "Stick" Stickley is back on the outside and trying to stay legit. But it's tough staying straight in a crooked town - and Miami is a pirate's paradise, where investment fat cats and lowlife drug dealers hold hands and dance. And when a crazed player chooses Stick at random to die for another man's sins, the struggling ex-con is left with no choice but to dive right back into the game. Besides, Stick knows a good thing when he sees it....

He used to be on the bomb squad, but it's not until he transfers out that Chris Mankowski really begins juggling with dynamite. Rape and revenge are just the tip of the iceberg in a twisty tale that brings Detroit's denizens to life - and occasional death - in all their seedy glory. Electrifying, explosive, and unexpected, this is Elmore Leonard at his suspenseful best.

Ironworker Wayne Colson and his spirited wife Carmen are witnesses to a shakedown scam - witnesses who must be eliminated. Enter Armand Degas, aka Blackbird, the brains of the operation, and his partner Richie Nix, an ex-con whose highest goal is to rob a bank in every state. A lively chase ensues when the Colsons enter the Federal Witness Security Program with two bumbling but determined killers on their trail.

Working at his brother-in-law's New Orleans funeral home isn't reformed jewel thief Jack Delaney's idea of excitement - until he's dispatched to a leper's hospital to pick up a corpse that turns out to be very much alive ... and under the care of a beautiful, radical ex-nun in designer jeans. The "deceased" is the one-time squeeze of a Nicaraguan colonel who's ordered her dead for trying to "infect" him, and Sister Lucy's looking to spirit the young woman away from his guns and goons.

The feds want Miami bookmaker Harry Arno to squeal on his wiseguy boss. So they're putting word out on the street that Arno's skimming profits from "Jimmy Cap" Capotorto - which he is, but everybody does it. He was planning to retire to Italy someday anyway, so Harry figures now's a good time to get lost. U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens knows Harry's tricky - the bookie ditched him once in an airport while in the marshal's custody - but not careful.

The odd thing about Walter Schoen, German born but now running a butcher shop in Detroit, he's a dead ringer for Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS and the Gestapo. Honey Deal, Walter's American wife, doesn't know that Walter is a member of a spy ring and gives shelter to escaped German POWs. But she's tired of telling him jokes he doesn't understand; it's time for a divorce.