Back Four Novels of the 1970s

Elmore Leonard: Four Novels of the 1970s

Fifty-Two Pickup | Swag | Unknown Man No. 89 | The Switch

Edited by Gregg Sutter

“If you haven’t read Leonard’s work from the ’70s, you have no idea how much fun you’re going to have.”—Alex Belth, The Daily Beast

Overview
News & Views

Overview

News | Story of the Week Flashback: When Elmore Leonard, a “rising young writer of Western novels,” debuted (sort of) in The New Yorker
May 3, 2018

The Moviegoer Dark, sexy, funny: What makes Out of Sight the best film version of an Elmore Leonard novel
October 6, 2016

Interviews The career zenith of Elmore Leonard, “the most cinematic novelist in the English language”
September 23, 2016

Save $30 when you buy all three Elmore Leonard volumes of crime novels in a boxed set.

Blending gritty toughness and unpredictable violence with wild humor and an uncanny ear for the rhythms of ordinary speech, Elmore Leonard 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 we’ve ever had.” Now The Library of America inaugurates a three-volume edition of Leonard’s greatest work, prepared in consultation with the author shortly before his death and edited by his long-time researcher Gregg Sutter.

Leonard began his career in the 1950s as a writer of pulp westerns, but switched genres at the end of the 1960s and slowly but steadily achieved recognition as a fantastically inventive storyteller and a one-of-a-kind stylist. For all the dazzling complications of his plots—often involving brilliantly elaborate scams, of which he was a master—it was the people who mattered most in his books, people from every walk of life and every social byway.

The four novels collected in this first volume re-invented the American crime novel and cemented Leonard’s reputation. All are set in his hometown Detroit, a hard-working “shot and a beer” kind of place whose lawless underside becomes a stage for an unforgettable cast of rogues, con artists, and psychopaths. Fifty-Two 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 small-time criminal careers of an amiable ex-con 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. 89 (1977) spins a complex web of crisscrossing rip-offs and con games, with process server Jack Ryan, a typically laid-back Leonard protagonist, caught in the middle. In The Switch (1978), one of Leonard’s 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 Leonard’s 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.

Detroit native Gregg Sutter first met Elmore Leonard in 1979 and began working for him in 1981. He is currently at work on a biography of Leonard, from his unique perspective as his full-time researcher for more than thirty years.

This Library of America series edition is printed on acid-free paper and features Smyth-sewn binding, a full cloth cover, and a ribbon marker.

This volume is published with project support and kept in print through the Guardians of American Letters Fund by the Geoffrey C. Hughes Foundation in honor of Walter Cliff.
News & Views

News | Story of the Week Flashback: When Elmore Leonard, a “rising young writer of Western novels,” debuted (sort of) in The New Yorker
May 3, 2018

The Moviegoer Dark, sexy, funny: What makes Out of Sight the best film version of an Elmore Leonard novel
October 6, 2016

Interviews The career zenith of Elmore Leonard, “the most cinematic novelist in the English language”
September 23, 2016

Influences Lorenzo Carcaterra: Elmore Leonard “brought his characters close enough to life they could be touched”
July 20, 2016

Interviews Gregg Sutter on Elmore Leonard’s “dialogue-driven crime novels with an emphasis on character”
January 14, 2016

31.50 List Price: $37.50 (Save: 16%) Free shipping on orders $50 and over

Or buy from our partners

Phone orders: 1-800-964-5778 Request product #202707

ISBN: 978-1-59853-305-7 809 pages

LOA books are distributed worldwide by Penguin Random House

N° 255 Library of America Series

Subscribers can purchase the slipcased edition by signing in to their accounts.

Related Books

Elmore Leonard: Four Novels of the 1980s LOA N°267

Women Crime Writers: Eight Suspense Novels of the 1940s & 50s (boxed set)

American Noir: Eleven Classic Crime Novels of the 1930s, 40s, & 50s (boxed set)

Ross Macdonald: Four Novels of the 1950s LOA N°264

Library of America

CURATOR

A champion of America’s great writers and timeless works, Library of America guides readers in finding and exploring the exceptional writing that reflects the nation’s history and culture.

Learn More

PUBLISHER

From poetry, novels, and memoirs to journalism, crime writing, and science fiction, the more than 300 volumes published by Library of America are widely recognized as America’s literary canon.

Browse our books Subscribe

NON-PROFIT

With contributions from donors, Library of America preserves and celebrates a vital part of our cultural heritage for generations to come.

Support our mission

Elmore Leonard: Four Novels of the 1970s

Related Books

Get 10% off your first Library of America purchase.