'Get Shorty' author Elmore Leonard dies

Elmore Leonard, the beloved crime novelist whose acclaimed best-sellers and the movies adapted from them chronicled the violent death of many a thug and con man, has died. He was 87.

Leonard, winner of an honorary National Book Award in 2012, died Tuesday morning at his home in Bloomfield Township, a suburb of Detroit, from complications from a stroke he suffered a few weeks ago, said his researcher, Gregg Sutter. Leonard was surrounded by family when he died, Sutter said.

Leonard's millions of fans, from bellhops to Saul Bellow, made best-sellers of all his books from "Glitz" (1985) onward. When they flocked to watch John Travolta in the movie version of "Get Shorty" in 1995, its author became the darling of Hollywood's hippest directors. Book critics and literary lions, prone to dismiss crime novels as mere entertainment, competed for adjectives to praise him.

His more than 40 novels were populated by pathetic schemers, clever con men and casual killers. All his books were characterized by moral ambivalence about crime, black humor and wickedly acute depictions of human nature -- the greedy dreams of Armand Degas in "Killshot," the wisecracking cool of Chili Palmer in "Get Shorty," Jack Belmont's lust for notoriety in "The Hot Kid."

"When something sounds like writing, I rewrite it," Leonard said -- and critics adored the flawlessly unadorned, colloquial style. As author Ann Arensberg put it in a New York Times book review, "I didn't know it was possible to be as good as Elmore Leonard."

Leonard spent much of his childhood in Detroit and set many of his novels in the city. Others were set in Miami near his North Palm Beach, Fla., vacation home.

One remarkable thing about his talent is how long the world took to notice it. He didn't have a best-seller until his 60th year, and few critics took him seriously before the 1990s.

He had some minor successes in the 1950s and '60s in writing Western stories and novels, a few of which were made into movies. But when interest in the Western dried up, he turned to writing scripts for educational and industrial films while trying his hand at another genre: crime novels.

The first, "The Big Bounce," was rejected 84 times before it was published as a paperback in 1969. Hollywood came calling again, paying $50,000 for the rights and turning it into a movie starring Ryan O'Neal that even Leonard called "terrible."

He followed up with several more fast-paced crime novels, including "Swag" (1976). Leonard was already following the advice he would later give to young writers: "Try to leave out the parts that people skip."

In 1978 he was commissioned to write an article about the Detroit Police Department. He shadowed officers for nearly three months. Starting with "City Primeval" in 1980, his crime novels had a new authenticity, with quirky yet believable characters and crisp, slangy dialogue. But sales remained light.

Donald I. Fine, an editor at Arbor House, thought they deserved better, and he promised to put the muscle of his publicity department behind them. He delivered. In 1985 "Glitz," a stylish novel of vengeance set in Atlantic City, became Leonard's first best-seller.

Leonard never looked back.

Hollywood rediscovered him, churning out a succession of poorly reviewed movies, including the humorless "51 Pick-Up," starring Roy Scheider. Its director, John Frankenheimer, failed to capture the sensibilities of Leonard's work, and his ear missed the clever dialogue.

It took Barry Sonnenfeld to finally show Hollywood how to turn a Leonard novel into a really good movie. "Get Shorty" was the first to feel and sound like a Leonard novel.

Then Quentin Tarantino took a turn with "Rum Punch," turning it into "Jackie Brown," a campy, blaxploitation-style film starring Pam Grier. But Steven Soderbergh stayed faithful to Leonard's story and dialogue with "Out of Sight."

Leonard kept writing well into his 80s, and his process remained the same.

He settled in at his home office in Bloomfield Township around 10 a.m. behind a desk covered with stacks of paper and books. He lit a cigarette, took a drag and set to writing -- longhand, of course -- on the 63-page unlined yellow pads that were custom-made for him.

When he finished a page, he transcribed it onto another sheet of paper with an electric typewriter. He tried to complete three to five pages by the end of his workday at 6 p.m.

"Well, you've got to put in the time if you want to write a book," Leonard told The Associated Press in 2010, discussing the shift work befitting his hometown's standing as the nation's automotive capital.

Leonard sold his first story, "Trail of the Apache," in 1951 and followed with 30 more for such magazines as "Dime Western," earning 2 or 3 cents a word. At the time, he was working in advertising, and he would wake up early to work on his fiction before trudging off to write Chevrolet ads.

One story, "3:10 to Yuma," became a noted 1956 movie starring Glenn Ford, and the same year "The Captives" was made into a film called "The Tall T." But the small windfall from selling those rights wasn't enough for Leonard to quit his day job. ("3:10 to Yuma" was remade in 2007, starring Russell Crowe.)

Leonard's first novel, "The Bounty Hunters," was published in 1953, and he wrote four more in the next eight years. One of them, "Hombre," about a white man raised by Apaches, was a breakthrough for the struggling young writer. When 20th Century Fox bought the rights for $10,000 in 1967, he quit the ad business to write full time.

"Hombre" became a pretty good movie starring Paul Newman, and the book was named one of the greatest Westerns of all time by the Western Writers of America.

Soon, another Leonard Western, "Valdez Is Coming," became a star vehicle for Burt Lancaster. But as the 1960s ended, the market for Westerns fizzled. Leonard wrote five more, but they sold poorly, and Hollywood lost interest.

Leonard was born in New Orleans on Oct. 11, 1925, the son of General Motors executive Elmore John Leonard and his wife, Flora.

The family settled near Detroit when young Elmore was 10. The tough, undersized young man played quarterback in high school and earned the nickname "Dutch," after Emil "Dutch" Leonard, a knuckleball pitcher of the day. The ballplayer's card sat for years in the writer's study on one of the shelves lined with copies of his books.

After serving in the Navy during World War II, he majored in English at the University of Detroit. He started writing copy for an advertising agency before his graduation in 1950.

He married three times: to the late Beverly Cline in 1949, the late Joan Shepard in 1979 and, at the age of 68, to Christine Kent in 1993. He had five children, all from his first marriage.

His son Peter followed in his father's path, going into advertising for years before achieving his own success as a novelist with his 2008 debut, "Quiver."

In 2012, after learning he was to receive a National Book Award for lifetime achievement, Leonard said he had no intention of retiring from his life's work.

"I probably won't quit until I just quit everything -- quit my life -- because it's all I know how to do," he told the AP at the time. "And it's fun. I do have fun writing, and a long time ago, I told myself, 'You got to have fun at this, or it'll drive you nuts."'

The Associated Press