Gold Coast by Elmore Leonard: First Edition (Bantam Paperback, 1980); Review

NB: Featured in this week's Friday's Forgotten Books.

In a 1991 interview with Elmore Leonard (published in the December 2012 issue of Contrapasso Magazine and available as a PDF here), interviewer Anthony May asked the writer what he saw as the distinction between the hardback and the paperback (a subject that's long been dear to my heart). Leonard responded: "...respectability, that's all. I have always been in hardback up until I chose, twice, the more recent time in 1978 when I went to Bantam, to be in paperback simply to make more money."

In actual fact, for a while there in the '70s, Leonard could more accurately be described as a paperback writer than a hardback author. Eight of the twelve novels he published from 1969 – when he resumed his fiction writing career after nearly a decade in the advertising wilderness – until 1980 – when Arbor House became his main American publisher with City Primeval (remaining so for the next ten years) – were issued as paperback originals in the States (a handful were published into hardback in the UK): The Big Bounce (Fawcett/Gold Medal, 1969), Valdez is Coming (Fawcett/Gold Medal, 1970), Forty Lashes Less One (Bantam, 1972), Mr. Majestyk (Dell, 1974), The Hunted (Dell, 1977), The Switch (Bantam, 1978), Gunsights (Bantam, 1979), and this book:

Gold Coast, published as a paperback original by Bantam in December 1980, cover photography by the Freelance Photographers Guild. The last of Leonard's novels to be published straight to paperback in the US, it's also significant in that it signalled a shift in locale in the author's stories. Up to this point, the majority of Leonard's contemporaneously set novels (not his westerns, in other words) had centred on Detroit and the surrounding area. In Gold Coast, though, the author moved the action down to Florida, where mobster's wife Karen DiCillia learns upon the death of her husband Frank that he's left instructions to the effect that if she wants to keep hold of his money, she can never be with another man again. It's a ludicrous scenario, but Leonard is less interested in the set-up than in the resulting chaos, as Karen is beset by mob hitman Roland Crowe – who has designs on both her and her money (or rather Frank's) – and enlists the aid of ex-con Calvin Maguire in helping her escape Frank's bizarre bequest and the unwanted attentions of Roland.

In truth Maguire, rather than Karen, is the novel's real lead; he's another in the long line of Leonard felons – see also Jack Ryan (The Big Bounce/Unknown Man No. 89), Ernest Stickley, Jr. (Swag/Stick), Chili Palmer (Get Shorty/Be Cool) and Jack Foley (Out of Sight/Road Dogs) – uncertain of or unhappy with their place in the world but unwilling to knuckle under and become Average Joes. Maguire may not know quite what he wants, but Leonard makes his confusion palpable, whereas Karen remains something of an enigma throughout: opaque, her intentions unclear (despite the misleading back cover copy on the Bantam paperback). It's only in the final few pages we start to get a sense of who she really is – or rather, who she might be.

But it could be argued that the real star of the show is Roland Crowe. A hulking lascivious hillbilly cut from the same cloth as the later Richard Nobles (LaBrava, 1983), Roland is the first in what would become a family tree of Crowes, its roots extending deep beneath Leonard's backlist. Roland's brother, Elvin, and his nephew, Dale Jr., both feature in Maximum Bob (1991), while another Crowe, Earl, pops up in the first Raylan Givens novel, Pronto (1993), and Dale Jr. makes a reappearance in its sequel, Riding the Rap (1995). The Crowes even make the leap to television in the form of Dewey Crowe, a recurring thorn in the side of Raylan Givens in the Justified TV show, although quite what Dewey's relationship is to the literary Crowe clan isn't made explicit.

Anyway, stone the Crowes (arf): I do believe I've reached the final post in this (over-)extended series on Elmore Leonard. Not that there won't be more from Mr. Leonard on Existential Ennui in the near future; I've further splendid first editions to blog about, and I'll be keeping an eye out for updates on Leonard's well-being (he was recently hospitalised following a stroke). But there'll be posts on other authors and books besides, starting with a Westlake Score...

Stand on the Saber (Last Stand at Saber River / Lawless River) by Elmore Leonard (Corgi, 1960)

This penultimate Elmore Leonard paperback – nearly done now – dates from the first phase of Leonard's career, i.e. 1951–1961, when he was writing nothing but westerns:

Last Stand at Saber River, the fourth of five western novels Leonard published over that period, issued as a paperback original in the States by Dell in 1959. Except, as you can see, this isn't that edition: it's the first British paperback edition, retitled as Stand on the Saber and published by Corgi in 1960 (Corgi #SW847). In fact the novel's title was changed twice for British publication: Robert Hale published it in hardback under the title Lawless River in 1959 (you can see a facsimile of the Hale dust jacket, along with jackets for others of Leonard's early westerns, at Facsimile Dust Jackets LLC), and Corgi changed it again the year after.

Copies of the Corgi edition are almost as scarce as the Hale edition – there are presently two Corgi paperbacks versus one Hale hardback on AbeBooks – but prices couldn't be more different between the two: less than a fiver for the Corgi; over two grand for the Hale. So you can see why I went for the Corgi edition – that and the rather nice cover artwork, which I've unfortunately been unable to identify, despite asking a couple of paperback experts. (A partial signature – "HARRY" in capital letters – is visible bottom right of the artwork, which prompted one of the experts to suggest it might be by American artist Harry J. Schaare, but Schaare tended to sign his work with his surname, lowercase, so I remain unconvinced.)

But the main reason I bought the book is I was curious to see how it compares to Leonard's later western, the terrific Valdez is Coming (1970), and indeed to his work in general in that second phase of his career from 1969 onwards, when he returned to writing fiction after an enforced break (the western market having pretty much dried up by the end of the '50s). Answer being, not especially favourably.

Oh it's not a bad novel, by any stretch of the imagination. The story of Paul Cable, a Confederate soldier who, having been injured towards the end of the Civil War, returns with his family to his homestead in the Saber River valley to find it overrun by a Union gang, it's a decent enough western, moves at a reasonable clip and has its fair share of tense standoffs and shootouts. But it's certainly not the equal of Valdez is Coming, nor of the non-western novels Leonard penned when he resumed his writing career (The Big Bounce, Mr. Majestyk, Fifty-Two Pickup, etc.). Though there are hints of the Leonard to come – notably the way he makes the ostensible villains of the piece at least as compelling, if not more so, than Cable – it lacks the economy, the subtlety, the depth of later Leonard – that wry, supple prose and ear for the vernacular in dialogue.

Leonard himself admitted as much in a 2009 Goodreads interview. "When I read those [early westerns]," he told the interviewer, "I would definitely say my style has changed. I think it started with one of the last westerns – I was trying to get a little more humour in it, but also to be more spare in the writing. [Prior to that] I was using pronouns and making a lot of noise with the writing." He was also, at least on the evidence of Last Stand at Saber River, using adverbs – something that would become strictly verboten post-1969, as outlined in Leonard's celebrated 10 Rules of Writing – number 4, to be precise, "Never use an adverb to modify the verb 'said'... he admonished gravely." Which of course follows Rule number 3: "Never use a verb other than 'said' to carry dialogue." Although if Last Stand at Saber River is any indication, Leonard learned his own lesson early there.

Right then. Just one final Elmore Leonard paperback to come: the last of his novels to be published as a paperback original in the States...

The Hunted by Elmore Leonard: First British Paperback Edition (Hamlyn, 1980), Review

NB: Linked in this week's Friday's Forgotten Books.

For this second post in the paperback segment of a larger series of posts on various Elmore Leonard novels, I had intended to take a critical look at Leonard's 1959 western Last Stand at Saber River, comparing it to his later, and in my opinion better, western, Valdez is Coming (1970). But then the news broke on Monday that Leonard had been hospitalized following a stroke – from which he's reportedly recovering, thankfully – and even though I wasn't planning on giving Last Stand at Saber River a good kicking or anything – it's not by any means a bad book – I figured I'd save that post for next week and instead, as a kind of tribute to the 87-year-old author, take a look at a paperback edition of a novel about which I'm much more enthusiastic:

The Hunted, originally published in the States as a paperback by Dell in 1977. This isn't that edition, however – and nor is it the 1978 British Secker & Warburg hardback, which is so scarce I've never even seen its cover. No, this is the 1980 Hamlyn edition – the first British paperback edition, in other words – which, while not quite as uncommon as the Secker edition, is still in relatively short supply. I bought this copy as a result of reading The Hunted as part of the Elmore Leonard omnibus Dutch Treat a few months back; I liked it so much I decided I needed an early edition of the novel by itself, this Hamlyn paperback, dodgy '80s glamour cover and all, being the best I could do (for now; I'll be keeping an eye out for a Dell or Secker edition).

As to why The Hunted made such an impression on me, I ventured a few reasons when I reviewed it as part of Dutch Treat, back at the beginning of this series of Leonard posts, calling it, if you'll indulge me quoting myself, "as lean and gripping a manhunt thriller as you could wish for". I continued in an erudite fashion:

While The Hunted is on the surface a straightforward man-on-the-run tale, it's the story's locale which lends it its additional edge: Israel, with its history of conflict (the scars visible now and then in the narrative) and constricted geography. It's a tiny country, almost impossible to hide in, which makes it perfect for a game of cat and mouse between a trio of hitmen [Rashad, Teddy and Valenzuela] and a Federal witness businessman [Al Rosen] and his new Marine buddy [David Davis – no relation].

To which I'd add that you could, if you felt so inclined, make a useful comparison with the aforementioned Valdez is Coming, despite that novel being a western and The Hunted being contemporaneously set (as I mentioned in this post on the later Leonard novel Cuba Libre, Leonard started his career writing westerns, and an argument could be made that a number of his later crime novels and thrillers are westerns in all but name). To wit: both are wiry, linear thrillers, unencumbered by much in the way of plot (a good thing, in case you were wondering); both involve the pursuit of a pair of protagonists by a bunch of hired killers; and both climax with a tense standoff at a remote locale, although the standoff in The Hunted entails rather more bloodshed than the one in Valdez is Coming.

Mind you, it's not unusual for a Leonard novel to feature some kind of standoff towards the end. Take Last Stand at Saber River, for example...

Breaking News: Elmore Leonard Suffers Stroke, Recovering in Hospital

Interrupting my ongoing series of posts on Elmore Leonard's novels, I just spotted on the Twitter feed of Leonard's researcher and webmaster, Gregg Sutter, that Mr. Leonard is currently in hospital, having had a stroke a week ago. The report comes from The Detroit News, and details are light, but Sutter told the paper that the 87-year-old author "is doing better every day, and the family is guardedly optimistic". I'll update this post if and when more information is forthcoming, but in the meantime I'd like to wish Mr. Leonard a speedy recovery, and note that I'm very much looking forward to that reportedly in-progress 46th novel.

Valdez is Coming by Elmore Leonard (Gold Medal, 1970, Frank McCarthy Cover Art): Book Review

NB: A Friday Forgotten Book.

Let's begin the paperback segment of this seemingly endless series of posts on Elmore Leonard with a western:

Valdez is Coming, published as a paperback original in the States in October 1970 by Fawcett/Gold Medal, cover art by Frank McCarthy. The copy seen here, which I acquired from Alan White Fine Books, is the true American first edition, as evidenced by the 60 cent cover price and the presence on the back of a pair of stills from the 1971 Burt Lancaster-starring movie adaptation:

Which are missing on later printings. So now you know. (In fact the earliest edition of the novel is the British Robert Hale hardback, published in 1969 under a terrible photographic dust jacket, but seeing as the scant few copies of it available online are hideously expensive – at least a grand for a decent one – it's unlikely I'll ever get my hands on one.)  

Valdez is Coming is one of two Leonard novels Gold Medal published when the author resumed his (fiction) writing career in the late 1960s (the other being 1969's The Big Bounce), but it actually started life almost a decade before: the first chapter of the novel was originally a short story, "Only Good Ones", which appeared in Western Roundup at the tail end of the first phase of Leonard's career (when he was writing nothing but westerns) in 1961. (A tip of the hat to Vintage Hardboiled Reads for that info.) Stylistically, though, it's recognisably the work of the Leonard who penned the likes of The Big Bounce and Mr. Majestyk and The Hunted in the late 1960s and throughout the '70s, rather than the Leonard who penned the early westerns: lean, no waste, and with a distinct lack of modifying adverbs.

Certainly Leonard himself thinks so. In a 2009 Goodreads interview he agreed that his style had changed and that "it started with one of the last westerns – I was trying to get a little more humor in it, but also to be more spare in the writing", adding: "[Previously] I was using pronouns and making a lot of noise with the writing." That same year he told The Barnes and Noble Review's James Mustich: "...it was when I was writing Valdez is Coming, I began to see something a little different, that I could get into the character not simply as a hero, but as an individual. That helped me. From then on, I looked more at my characters as human beings, not just this guy wearing a badge, and so on." He also told mystery novelist Jean Henry Mead in a separate interview that he felt Valdez is Coming was his best western novel – a view endorsed by George Pelecanos (among others), who wrote that it was his "favorite Leonard novel, a perfect piece of lean, evocative writing, one hundred and thirty six pages (my Bantam paperback edition) [note: 156 pages in the Gold Medal edition, excluding prelims] of prose containing not one wasted word".

Of the Leonard novels I've read, I wouldn't say Valdez is Coming was my favourite, but it is bloody good. The opening chapter is – as you'd expect, given its origins – essentially a complete story in itself, centring on a standoff at a shack in the scrub country outside the town of Lanoria – a standoff which ends when Bob Valdez, the Mexican constable of Lanoria, is forced to kill the black man mistakenly identified by horse trader and gunrunner Frank Tanner as a murderer and army deserter. Thereafter, figuring Tanner and the other Lanoria grandees owe the man's pregnant Native American widow restitution, Valdez goes to see Tanner and asks him for money; Tanner's response is to have his men, including his segundo (second-in-command), beat Valdez and send him on his way. And when the stubborn Valdez comes back again, he's dealt with even more harshly (the Gold Medal cover art will give you an idea how harshly).

That Valdez's subsequent actions encompass the kidnapping of Tanner's woman, Gay Erin, and the killing of so many men it's hard to keep track (although Valdez does) – and that they in turn mean hardship for his horsebreaker friend, Diego Luz and his family – might lead those unfamiliar with the novel to believe that it is in essence a straightforward tale of revenge. But there's much more to the novel than that. Valdez's motivations – indeed the motivations of all of the major characters, however lightly sketched – are complex and not easily definable, touching on themes of, variously, justice, faith, mortality, hope, determination, friendship, companionship – even, at one stage, alcoholism (a subject Leonard, who around this time was drinking heavily, would return to in 1977's Unknown Man No. 89) and domestic violence. As Leonard puts it at the start of chapter two: "A man can be in two different places and he will be two different men. Maybe if you think of more places he will be more men, but two is enough for now."

And all this in 156 pages – or 136 if you're George Pelecanos – "of lean, evocative writing". In fact, compare Valdez is Coming to some of the westerns Leonard penned in the 1950s and you'd almost think they were the work of two different writers – as we'll discover, in the next Elmore Leonard post.

Cuba Libre by Elmore Leonard (Viking, 1998): Book Review

The generally accepted narrative of Elmore Leonard's writing career is that from 1951 (when he sold his first short story) to 1961 he wrote nothing but westerns, and when he returned to writing fiction in 1969 after an enforced break (the western market having dried up) he abandoned westerns in favour of crime fiction. But that broad outline is only part of the story. In truth, Leonard never completely turned his back on the western form: he continued to pen out-and-out westerns into the late 1970s (Valdez is Coming, 1970; Forty Lashes Less One, 1972; Gunsights, 1979), and it could be argued that even some of his contemporaneously set novels are westerns in all but name (Mr. Majestyk; The Hunted maybe; the Raylan Givens stories). And then there are those novels that fall somewhere in between – historical works like The Moonshine War (1969), The Hot Kid (2005) and this book:

Cuba Libre, published in 1998 and seen here in its British Viking edition, which sports the same Chip Kidd-designed dust jacket as the American Delacorte edition. Set in Cuba in 1898 on the eve of the Spanish-American War and the accompanying Cuban struggle for independence, it follows former bank robber Ben Tyler and his friend Charlie Burke as they transport a string of horses to the island – said horses being but a cover for a shipment of guns intended for the Cuban revolutionaries. Predictably, the pair soon run into trouble, both at the hands of the Guardia Civil and in particular one officer, Lionel Tavalera, and with an American planter, Roland Boudreaux. Meanwhile, in Havana harbour, seagoing marine Virgil Webster embarks on his own parallel adventure, as the ship he's aboard, the USS Maine, is sunk following an explosion – an event which will propel America into conflict with Spain.

Leonard weaves fact into fiction throughout Cuba Libre, blurring the lines between the two to suit his purposes. For example, although the Maine did indeed sink off the coast of Havana in 1898 with the loss of 266 lives, it seems at least as likely that it was caused by the spontaneous combustion of the ship's coal bunker than by, as Leonard suggests, a Spanish mine. But the author uses the disaster to shape Virgil Webster's story: suspecting he knows the truth, the Spanish authorities throw him in jail, in the process flinging him into the path of Ben Tyler. For Leonard, characters are always paramount; rather than slavishly recount the major engagements of the war and the revolution, in his hands the upheaval becomes a backdrop to the self-serving agendas and shifting allegiances of Tyler, Webster, Tavalera and Boudreaux, as well as Boudreaux's mistress, Amelia Brown, and Cuban wrangler Victor Fuentes – not all of whom, buffeted as they are by the events unfolding around them, will make it out alive.

Mind you, I've yet to read an Elmore Leonard book where there isn't at least one death, and usually more than one – and so it is here (there's a particularly shocking and unexpected killing a third of the way in). And with a fair smattering of duels and gunfights, prison escapes and horseback pursuits, ambushes, double-crosses and the tantalising prospect of stolen loot, despite the historical trappings the novel stands revealed as what it truly is: a western, plain and simple.

A couple of asides before we move on to the next Elmore Leonard novel. Courtesy of a September 1996 New Yorker article by Alec Wilkinson (kindly sent to me by Book Glutton; I'm not a New Yorker subscriber), I learned that much of Leonard's research for Cuba Libre came from one book: Our Islands and Their People, Volume I (1899), a copy of which was found by Leonard's researcher, Gregg Sutter (who these days also runs the official Elmore Leonard website), in a used bookstore on the way to see the author to discuss the novel. (When he saw the book, Leonard – who at that point was only nine pages into Cuba Libre and was having trouble with the dialogue of the period – reportedly exclaimed, "Oh, my God! Oh! Look at this!" then added: "This book, I can't believe it. A picture book of the period. This is all I need... I can get everything I need out of this." To which a despondent Sutter replied, "Don't say that. That's the last thing I want to hear.") And in yet another example of the interrelated nature of Leonard's characters across his canon, Virgil Webster is later revealed as having had a son – lawman Carl Webster, star of The Hot Kid, Comfort to the Enemy (2006) and Up in Honey's Room (2007), the latter of which also boasts an appearance by Virgil.

Anyway, seeing as we're on the subject of Leonard's westerns, let's have a look at one of his best next: 1970's Valdez is Coming, which kicks off a run of posts on Elmore Leonard paperbacks...