Tuesday, August 20, 2013
Best-selling author Elmore Leonard dies at 87
DETROIT (AP) -- He was the master of his genre, the Dickens of Detroit, the Chaucer of Crime.
Every novel Elmore Leonard wrote from the mid-1980s on was a best-seller, and every fan of crime stories knew his name. George Clooney was an admirer. So were Quentin Tarantino, Saul Bellow and Stephen King and millions of ordinary readers.
Leonard, who died today at age 87, helped achieve for crime writing what King did for horror and Ray Bradbury for science fiction. He made it hip, and he made it respectable.