Category: Western

1956 saw the publication of Leonard’s third novel, Escape from Five Shadows. It’s another fairly pulpy Western with a fairly pulpy title, but even so, it’s again a little closer to what you’d expect an Elmore Leonard novel to be — in some ways, anyway. In others, maybe not so much. It’s a little rough around the edges, but just the same, it’s a pretty fun story about an innocent man stuck with a seven-year prison sentence, desperate to escape from a prison camp run by a ruthless profiteer. Let’s get to it. Plot summary: Five Shadows is a convict…

Elmore Leonard’s second novel, The Law at Randado, came out in 1954. The Bounty Hunters showed him figuring things out, still finding his voice and rhythm, but it didn’t take long for Leonard to get into his groove: by his second outing, he had more or less figured out how he wanted to go about his business, both in terms of style and technique. Westerns were still Leonard’s genre of choice, and he’d keep working on them for a good while longer. But starting from here, his take on the Western feels decidedly more modern than in his earlier outing….

So this is it, the very first step on what is going to be a fairly long road: the inaugural On the Corner of Leonard and Stark post. We’re starting off with Elmore Leonard’s first novel, a Western called The Bounty Hunters. As a literary genre, the Western has shrunk to a fairly small niche these days. Not so back in the day: 19th century dime novels dealing with the taming of the west were hugely popular, and many of them purported to tell the true tales of actual people, like Wyatt Earp, Wild Bill Hickock and Buffalo Bill. Later,…