Cooler Than Cool: The Life and Work of Elmore Leonard

by C. M. Kushins Narrated by Jason Culp

Overview

Drawing on unprecedented archival and family access, Cooler Than Cool: The Life of Elmore Leonard, is the first comprehensive biography of the master American crime writer, author of witty, gritty bestsellers like Get Shorty and Raylan.

Over the course of his sixty-year career, Elmore Leonard, “the Dickens of Detroit,” published forty-five novels that have had enduring appeal to readers around the world. Revered by Martin Amis, Margaret Atwood, Raymond Carver, and Stephen King, his books were innovative in their blending of a Hemingway-inspired noirish minimalism and a masterful use of realistic dialogue over exposition-a direct evolution spurred by his years as a screenwriter.

Leonard's fiction contained many layers, and at the heart of his work were progressive themes, stemming from his years as a student of the Jesuit religious order, his personal beliefs in social justice, and his successful battle over alcoholism. He drew inspiration from greats like Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, but the true motivation and brilliance behind his crime writing was the ongoing class struggle to achieve the American Dream-often seen through the eyes of law enforcement officers and the criminals they vowed to apprehend.

C. M. Kushins tells Leonard's full life story against recurring themes and evolving storytelling methods of his work, drawing on interviews with primary sources ranging from Leonard's family and friends to those who acted in, produced, and directed his work onscreen. He also includes never-before-published excerpts from Leonard's unfinished final novel and planned memoir. Definitive and revealing, Cooler Than Cool shows Leonard emerging as one of the last writers of the “pulp fiction” era of midcentury America, to ultimately become one of the most successful storytellers of the twentieth century, whose influence continues to have far-reaching effects on both contemporary crime fiction and American filmmaking.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"Consistently engrossing ... Kushins does an excellent job of guiding us through Leonard’s stories, manuscripts and adaptations."  — Wall Street Journal

“If you love Elmore Leonard—and who doesn’t?—you’ll love this fascinating, richly detailed account of how one of our greatest storytellers lived his life and learned his craft. — Dave Barry, Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times bestselling author of Swamp Story

"Meticulously researched, Cooler Than Cool gives Elmore Leonard fans not a glimpse, but a fond gaze into the legendary crime novelist's mind and motivations. C. M. Kushins makes exceptional and economical use of Leonard's personal notes and preserved files, to seamlessly chronicle his career and times for a memorable read. Arguably, Kushins was born for the assignment, having since his youth been among Leonard's countless admirers. Detailing the subject's growth from an unknown Detroit copywriter into a literary legend, Cooler Than Cool is a slicker than slick biography worthy of the top shelf." — Eddie B. Allen Jr., author, Low Road: The Life and Legacy of Donald Goines

“A fascinating look at the origins and immense talent of Elmore Leonard. The most influential crime writer of the last half century finally gets the in-depth biography he deserves.” — Charles Ardai, co-founder and editor of Hard Case Crime     

"Meticulously researched. . . . A thoroughly researched chronicle of Leonard and his literary career.” — Library Journal

“A lively, eventful biography of the eminent—and undeniably cool—writer Elmore Leonard. . . . A welcome celebration of a writer who, word by word and page by page, earned every bit of his fame.” — Kirkus Reviews

“A strong overview of a towering crime novelist’s career, this satisfies.” — Publishers Weekly

"For Leonard’s legion of fans the book is a must-read, but you don’t need to be a Leonard fan to enjoy this beautifully crafted life story." — Booklist

"Kushins has done Zeppelin scholarship a service with his new biography.... [He] points out subtle musical details which should enhance the understanding and appreciation of the Zeppelin catalog for any fan." — Houston Press on Beast: John Bonham and the Rise of Led Zeppelin

"Chad Kushins has delivered a nuanced, in-depth, loving look at this complicated figure, one that helps cement him as one of the most complex and captivating musicians of our times." — NPR.org on Nothing’s Bad Luck: The Lives of Warren Zevon

"Nothing's Bad Luck is a riveting, definitive, and exhaustive account of the suspenseful and eventful life of one of rock's most gifted and eccentric singer-songwriters, and one of the best rock and roll biographies of the past decade." — Jay McInerney, author of Bright, Precious Days and Bright Lights, Big City

Kirkus Reviews

2025-04-15
A lively, eventful biography of the eminent—and undeniably cool—writer Elmore Leonard.

Leonard, nicknamed “Dutch” as a teenager in honor of a then-current baseball player, had other heroes as a kid: As biographer Kushins notes, Leonard wrote that his boyhood idols were the “desperadoes…roaming the Midwest and holding up banks” during the Depression era. As he grew up, the son of a General Motors executive and a mother who aspired to write, he became a model student who, for a brief time, entertained thoughts of priesthood but then “discovered girls.” He saw action in the Pacific in World War II, though he later joshed that “his military service had accounted for little more than distributing beer and taking out the trash.” Back home in Detroit, he went into advertising while trying his hand at writing, concentrating on genres “where I could learn how to write and be selling at the same time.” He began with Westerns, encouraged by the postwar boom in pulp Western fiction, turning in stories such as “Three-Ten to Yuma” that would rank at the top of the canon. By the mid-1950s he was writing more novels than stories while taking “stabs at the type of satirical domestic vignettes associated with John O’Hara, Roald Dahl, and John Cheever.” Soon he found a new niche in crime, taking the point of view of the street-smart hustler and desperadoes of his youth and saying, “I’m not all that interested in the way educated people think.” Yet, of course, after the success of books such asFreaky Deaky andGet Shorty—books intensely researched and planned out to the last comma, with those exact outlaws at their heart—Leonard’s work is now standard among those educated people, and not even as a guilty pleasure, enshrined in the library of America.

A welcome celebration of a writer who, word by word and page by page, earned every bit of his fame.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940190909302
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	06/10/2025
Edition description:	Unabridged

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