Me and Elmore Leonard

My introduction to Mr. Leonard's fiction took place at Fort Riley, Kansas, when I saw the film Joe Kidd adapted from his Western by the same name. It starred Clint Eastwood. I recall lots of shooting, and Clint doing his signature grimace, though that might be inaccurate due to a faded memory.

Which brings me to my recent reading of Mr. Leonard's hardboiled Western Hombre cited by the Western Writers of America as one of the top 25 Westerns ever written. I can't quarrel with that. I haven't read a finer Western this year.

I believe I've also seen the movie (1967) starring Paul Newman and Richard Boone. Cameron Mitchell of High Chaparral fame plays the bad guy. (I just wasted fifteen minutes browsing at http://www.thehighchaparral.com and I bet you could do the same.)

What makes Hombre work, at least for me, is the noirish half-breed John Russell protagonist who appears as a strong, silent type. He doesn't stick his neck out for anybody. Not yet, anyway. Russell's character is developed through the eyes of the narrator who relates their story in first-person.

So, if you've got a reader's yen to dip into something different, try Elmore Leonard's Hombre before he turned to his prodigious talents to writing crime fiction titles.

By Ed Lynskey
Twitter: @edlynskey
Author of Lake Charles
"Definitely recommend you take a fictional journey to Lake Charles."
Elizabeth A. White's Musings of an All Purpose Monkey