Elmore Leonard: Four Novels of the 1970s (LOA #255): FiftyTwo Pickup / Swag / Unknown Man No. 89 / The Switch (Library of Ameri

The Library of America inaugurates its Elmore Leonard edition with four funny, streetsmart early masterpieces, gathered in one volume for the first time: Blending gritty toughness and unpredictable violence with wild humor and an uncanny ear for the rhythms of ordinary speech, Elmore Leonard (19252013) was the most widely and enthusiastically admired crime novelist of his time. His genius for scene and dialogue led Time magazine to describe him as a Dickens of Detroit, and Newsweek called him the best American writer of crime alive, possibly the best weve ever had. Now The Library of America inaugurates a threevolume edition of Leonards greatest work, prepared in consultation with the author shortly before his death and edited by his longtime researcher Gregg Sutter.The four novels collected in this first volume reinvented the American crime novel and cemented Leonards reputation. All are set in his hometown Detroit, a hardworking shot and a beer kind of place whose lawless underside becomes a stage for an unforgettable cast of rogues, con artists, and psychopaths. FiftyTwo Pickup (1974), fast and sharply written, is an insidiously brutal book about an adulterous businessman who runs afoul of a crew of murderous blackmailers. Swag (1976) finds Leonard moving for the first time into the more comic mode that would become his signature, as he charts the smalltime criminal careers of an amiable excon and an ambitious car salesman who share a bachelor pad and pursue their hedonistic dream of the good life through a string of armed robberies. Unknown Man No. 23 (1977) spins a complex web of crisscrossing ripoffs and con games, with process server Jack Ryan, a typically laidback Leonard protagonist, caught in the middle. In The Switch (1978), one of Leonards funniest books, Mickey Dawson, a discontented housewife held for ransom, manages to turn the tables on her kidnappers while exacting overdue revenge on her scheming husband.This volume also contains a newly researched chronology of Elmore Leonards life, drawing on materials in his personal archive, and detailed annotations, which include as a special bonus a scene from the typescript for Swag that did not appear in the published book.LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nations literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, Americas best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acidfree paper that will last for centuries.