Elmore Leonard (1925—2013) began his long and extraordinary career as a writer of Westerns, most famously a story which was made into the film 3:10 To Yuma. He then became known for his remarkable sequence of crime novels, generally set in Michigan or Florida. A master of funny and threatening dialogue, his influence has been incalculable. Leonard received the Lifetime Achievement Award from PEN US and the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America.

The chaotic, blackly comic story is carried aloft on Leonard’s cool, easy prose... Elmore Leonard’s centenary year is the ideal time to discover, or rediscover, the prolific American western and crime writer whose work – fuelled by wit, charm, action and dialogue – dominated cinema screens in the 1990s