{"id":229,"date":"2011-05-19T22:15:58","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T22:15:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zirkvandenberg.com\/?p=229"},"modified":"2017-11-23T22:55:36","modified_gmt":"2017-11-23T22:55:36","slug":"crime-writer-elmore-leonards-best-book-isnt-a-crime-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zirkvandenberg.com\/index.php\/2011\/05\/19\/crime-writer-elmore-leonards-best-book-isnt-a-crime-book\/","title":{"rendered":"Crime writer Elmore Leonard\u2019s best book isn\u2019t a crime book"},"content":{"rendered":"

To some,\u00a0Elmore Leonard\u00a0<\/a>is famous for writing\u00a0Get Shorty<\/em>. To others, he\u2019s the cool crime writer who leaves out the parts readers usually skip. Some may even remember him for his early Westerns like\u00a0Hombre<\/em>. Not many will equate his name with a book that is neither Western nor crime story.<\/p>\n

It is called\u00a0<\/span>The Juvenal Touch\u00a0<\/a><\/em>or sometimes simply\u00a0Touch<\/em>. It is the story of a religious man with healing powers. There is some nefarious goings on, but that\u2019s not the focus of the story.<\/p>\n

An example to illustrate:\u00a0\u201cI was up north.\u201d Not giving anything away.<\/em>It has all the other hallmarks of vintage Leonard though. The sparse writing that makes him arguably the easiest of all writers to read. The cool, smart characters. The crackling dialogue, often followed by interpretive phrases that wouldn\u2019t pass muster on MS Word spellchecker. (The dreaded \u201cFragment\u201d fault.)<\/p>\n

In fact,\u00a0Touch\u00a0<\/em>is a more typical piece of Elmore Leonard writing than at least one of his full-on crime books,\u00a0Split Images<\/em>. If I haven\u2019t read all of Elmore Leonard\u2019s books, I\u2019ve read nearly all, and\u00a0Split Images\u00a0<\/em>is the most ambitious structurally and darkest in tone of the lot. It\u2019s the only one that ends on a downer. Truth be told, it reads like all of it was written by a man on a downer.<\/p>\n

The Juvenal Touch<\/em>\u00a0is at the other end of the spectrum. It\u2019s an uplifting book. It is the book of a hopeful romantic, without the tough veneer that seemingly comes with the territory in crime stories. (Here\u2019s a thought: Can anyone think of a\u00a0tender<\/em>\u00a0crime story?)<\/p>\n

If I had little time to live and could only reread one Elmore Leonard book,\u00a0Touch\u00a0<\/em>would be it.<\/p>\n

Of the many others, I\u2019d probably pick something written from\u00a0Stick\u00a0<\/em>to\u00a0Get Shorty<\/em>, skipping anything set in historic times or outside the US. Not that they\u2019re bad \u2013 it\u2019s just that Leonard is at his most appealing in modern Detroit or Florida settings.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re not a reader of crime but are interested in the craft of writing, you should try to read at least one Elmore Leonard book.\u00a0Get Shorty\u00a0<\/em>could be the easiest to like, but I find the inexplicably little-known\u00a0Touch\u00a0<\/em>hardest to forget.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To some,\u00a0Elmore Leonard\u00a0is famous for writing\u00a0Get Shorty. To others, he\u2019s the cool crime writer who leaves out the parts readers…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[24,28],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zirkvandenberg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zirkvandenberg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zirkvandenberg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zirkvandenberg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zirkvandenberg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/zirkvandenberg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":230,"href":"https:\/\/zirkvandenberg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229\/revisions\/230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zirkvandenberg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zirkvandenberg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zirkvandenberg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}