Bandits
Page 34
[Applause]
Editor’s note: Martin Amis is the author of many novels — including Money: A Suicide Note; London Fields; and Night Train — and many works of nonfiction, including a collection of essays and criticism, The War Against Cliché, in which may be found other interesting observations on the work of Elmore Leonard.
About the Author
Elmore Leonard has written more than three dozen books during his highly successful writing career, including the national bestsellers Tishomingo Blues, Pagan Babies, and Be Cool. Many of his novels have been made into movies, including Get Shorty, Out of Sight, Valdez Is Coming, and Rum Punch (as Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown). He has been named Grand Master by Mystery Writers of America and lives in Bloomfield Village, Michigan, with his wife.
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ELMORE LEONARD
BANDITS
“The hottest thriller writer in the U.S.”
Time
“Razor-sharp characterizations, wonderful dialogue, quirky humor . . . He can render a human being’s entire life in a few sentences of wardrobe description. . . . Elmore Leonard proves he has few peers in unfolding this sort of story.”
Los Angeles Times Book Review
“Leonard is one of the crime genre’s great writers.”
Dallas Morning News
“First-rate . . . crackles with suspense and intrigue . . . Leonard’s dialogue flourishes throughout. . . . The Hunted shows that Leonard has deserved all the praise he has received. He deserved it years ago.”
Bergen Record
“Leonard is the best in the business: His dialogue snaps, his characters are more alive than most of the people you meet on the street, and his twisting plots always resolve themselves with a no-nonsense plausibility.”
Newsday
“Does Elmore Leonard ever tire of hearing how fine a novelist he is? How remarkably consistent? . . . If he does, he might want to skip this valentine. . . . The reader often finds himself laughing out loud at how ingeniously and how naturally the writer fits all the pieces together. As for dull patches, well, there is more down time in a class of Ritalin-dosed kindergartners than in any Leonard novel. . . . If there is anything we have come to expect in a Leonard novel, it is to expect anything. . . . If Leonard had marketed Yugos, we’d all be driving one today.”
Orange County Register
“[Readers] should add the work of Elmore Leonard to their not-to-be-missed book lists. His tone—gritty, deadpan, matter-of-fact, and quietly poetic—makes his tales of violence and retribution both inimitable and addictive.”
Washington Post Book World
“The debate over who’s the all-time king of the whack job crime novelists just ended. Living or dead, Elmore Leonard tops ’em all.”
Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel
“Nobody but nobody on the current scene can match his ability to serve up violence so light-handedly, with so supremely deadpan a flourish.” Detroit News
“Leonard is a writer, which is like saying Michael Jordan is a basketball player. He is a master of a kind of tabloid literature: quick, knowing, filled with perfectly observed talk, and always with at least one dead body somewhere on the premises.”
New York Daily News
“The hallmark of a Leonard novel is the dialogue—crackling, vivid, full of menace, bluster, heat, and frustration. The stuff begs to be read out loud.”
Orlando Sentinel
“When Mr. Leonard is observing, satirizing, plotting, working up suspense, thickening the air with menace, discharging it in lightning flashes of violence, exposing the black holes behind the parts people play—when he tends to business, he gives us as much serious fun per word as anyone around.”
New York Times Book Review
“[With] his street-smart dialogue and funny backroom characters, he’s a sage poet of crime.”
Houston Chronicle
Books by Elmore Leonard
The Bounty Hunters
The Law at Randado
Escape from Five Shadows
Last Stand at Saber River
Hombre
The Big Bounce
The Moonshine War
Valdez Is Coming
Forty Lashes Less One
Mr. Majestyk
52 Pickup
Swag
Unknown Man #89
The Hunted
The Switch
Gunsights
Gold Coast
City Primeval
Split Images
Cat Chaster
Stick
LaBrava
Glitz
Bandits
Touch
Freaky Deaky
Killshot
Get Shorty
Maximum Bob
Rum Punch
Pronto
Riding the Rap
Out of Sight
Cuba Libre
The Tonto Woman and Other Western Stories
Be Cool
Pagan Babies
Tishomingo Blues
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
BANDITS. Copyright © 1987 by Elmore Leonard. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © JANUARY 2003 ISBN: 9780061828188
First HarperTorch paperback printing: February 2003
First William Morrow trade paperback printing: March 1999
First William Morrow hardcover printing: January 1987
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