A hit and myth by Elmore Leonard

My recent reading of Daniel Woodrell's Bayou Trilogy got me thinking of other regions of the United States that are foreign to me. And that led me to Elmore Leonard's 2005 novel The Hot Kid, a crime story that reads like a Western and spans an intermediate era between the two.

The good guys are federal agents and the bad guys bank robbers, but the hero in particular gets a mythlike origin story and accompanying legend more reminiscent of the lawmen of America's storied Western past. That Leonard updates that past with realistic sexual and ethnic detail is part of the book's fun.

Leonard began his career writing Westerns before becoming famous as a crime writer. His melding of the two in this book got me reflecting on the common roots of those two great genres of American popular writing.

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More than the previous Leonard I'd read, The Hot Kid made me understand what younger crime writers mean when they say they love his work. The rhythm of the man's sentences reminds me of John McFetridge, an avowed Elmore Leonard admirer, and also of Declan Burke, another Detectives Beyond Borders friend whose name often calls forth mentions of Leonard.

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I'm always on the lookout for appearances of my profession in crime novels. There's a nice one here about a reporter who wants to write about the Ku Klux Klan's hatred of Italians and Catholics but whose editor has other ideas:

"Tony wrote a story about the happy Fassino family's popular macaroni factory. Another one about a social club, the Christopher Columbus Society and its twenty-five piece band that at festivals and on the Fourth of July.

"The editor said, `I think you're getting the hang of it. Now write one about the tendency of your people to overindulge in Choctaw beer and homemade wine.'

"That did it. Tony Antonelli quit ... "

© Peter Rozovsky 2011