So here’s what’s up: I will read Elmore Leonard and Richard Stark novels, and then I will write about them. That’s it; that’s the site. I’m not selling you anything, I’m just interested in talking about these books by these two folks.
So… why Leonard and Stark? Well, they’re both known – you could say “revered,” and you probably wouldn’t be very wrong – as writers of crime fiction. That’s very much my jam in all of its myriad forms – hard-boiled pulp stories, detective stories, whodunnits, police procedurals, legal thrillers, weird psychological descents into madness and depravity, true crime, all of it. There are countless authors I like – Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, James Ellroy, Walter Mosley, Tana French, David Simon, Patricia Highsmith, Mickey Spillane, Denise Mina… I could go on, and that’s not even getting into writers in other mediums, like, oh, Greg Rucka or Ed Brubaker. Some of them are genuinely great; others I like kind of despite themselves, or even though I know they’re trash. (Mickey Spillane. It’s Mickey Spillane.) But Leonard and Stark? Well… for me, they really stand out from the crowd.
Elmore Leonard (1925-2013) is one of my favorite writers. He wrote 45 novels and a whole bunch of short stories, and exceptionally many of both have seen movie and TV adaptations. Justifiably famous for his lean writing style, Leonard’s got the kind of flow most other writers can only dream of. “I try to leave out the parts readers skip,” Leonard famously said. Speaking as a reader who pretty much never skips, I can appreciate that.
Richard Stark is another favorite. “Richard Stark” is one of the many, many pen names of Donald E. Westlake (1933-2008). He was a tremendously prolific writer, who wrote over a hundred books, but I’m only planning to cover the 24 Parker novels – in part just to spare myself, but also because a Stark novel is distinct from the rest of Westlake’s ouvre: there’s a stripped-down, direct quality that sets it apart from, say, Westlake’s Dortmunder novels. You can perhaps see the parallels.
Leonard is best known for his crime fiction, but he got started with Westerns – and yes, I’m going to cover those too, if only because arguably he never quite stopped writing Westerns, even when he switched over to crime. One of the most endearing aspects of his work is that classic Leonard cool so many of his characters have – an easygoing, effortless competence in the face of danger that nonetheless never tips over to superhuman ability. Most of Leonard’s stories feature different protagonists, although there are plenty of connections and recurring characters in there, a rich tapestry of settings and situations.
Stark’s Parker novels, by comparison, have a tight focus on Parker himself. Sometimes the point of view drifts, but Parker – a thief, a killer, a professional, and perhaps the perfect counter-argument to that tired old “main characters should be likeable” nonsense – is always at the center of it all, always scheming, always competent, always ready for the next job that, more often than not, ends up going wrong for reasons beyond his control. In many ways, Parker is the exact opposite of a Leonard character: he doesn’t care about looking cool, and there’s not a sentimental bone in his body.
And yet, for some reasons that make sense and some that probably don’t, Leonard and Stark tend to occupy the same space in my brain. Not that you would mistake a Leonard novel for a Stark novel, or vice versa, but there’s a certain thematic convergence there: they both had distinctive styles; they both were experts at writing about people doing bad things; they both had incredible flow. What’s more, what they wrote, though sometimes complicated and often cozying up against real darkness, wasn’t heavy. These stories have a certain buoyancy, almost a lightness: they’re quick on their feet, full of complex and rich characters, certainly packed with twists and turns and complications, but not bogged down by what, for lack of a better term, I have to describe as pretensions to literary greatness, let alone self-importance. Both of them wrote with rhythm and drive. Both of them had a mastery of style and economy of language. Leonard and Stark novels share a hallmark: they are exceptionally well-paced fun, and it is a genuine joy to read them.
Ultimately, though, it comes down to this: I love ‘em both, and I want to read their books again, and I want to tell you about them. (Most of these novels I’ve read before, but there are a couple I haven’t actually read before at all.) So here we are.
Oh, and I also intend to talk about related media. There’s a nearly overwhelming number of Leonard adaptations out there. The Parker novel adaptations don’t quite reach the same kind of numbers, but there’s a bunch of those out there, too. The quality on all of this adapted material varies wildly; some of it is excellent, some of it is godawful, but hey, it’ll be fun to talk about.
So that’s what I’m planning. We’ll see how it goes.