Tyler felt himself waking up from what had been his life among cowhands and convicts, neighbor to reservation people once nomads, on occasion visiting bartenders and whores who passed for old friends. It seemed a thinly populated life to what he saw here, this mix of people and sounds and colors in a place he imagined Africa might be like.
-- From "Cuba Libre," 1998

"Cuba Libre" was both a return to the western and a new direction for Leonard. Set in Cuba at the beginning of the Spanish-American War, it combined his love of American history with his affection for cowboys and guerrilla warfare and a good old-fashioned triple-cross involving a bag of money. It also gave us, in the character of Amelia, a heroine worthy of her circumstances. She witnesses atrocities and is goaded into revolutionary action by a native fighting the Spanish dons: "Use what you have already seen to hold your anger where you can feel it and that way you don't become so scared. You want to be in this war, come with us." She does, with a vengeance. Though critics were divided on the book, it zoomed to the upper reaches of the bestseller list and has, of course, been optioned for the screen, with Ethan and Joel Coen working on the script (though not committed to directing).

Leonard has been golden since the crossover success of "Glitz" in 1985 (every one of his novels has been on the bestseller list since then), and as good as that book is, it was part of an amazing run that began with the 1980 "City Primeval," still considered by many to be his best book. It is here that the western and crime genres truly flow together (in a moment of overemphasis, Leonard even subtitled it "High Noon in Detroit"). Though the story is touched off by the murder of a crooked judge in inner-city Detroit at a time when that city held the nation's per-capita homicide record, it is really the tale of two men -- detective Raymond Cruz and the "Oklahoma Wildman" Clement Mansell -- at opposite ends of the legal spectrum. Though this is a theme that has been played out in countless cops-and-robbers dramas (see "Heat," et al.), Leonard does not cloud his tale with the code of the West. Setting the standard for Quentin Tarantino, "NYPD Blue's" David Milch and countless other crime enthusiasts, Leonard told his tale with the language of the city, part law-enforcement nomenclature and part street jive. Take this passage of pure Dutch: It is exposition handled with the dispatch of a police report:

In his statement Gary Sovey, twenty-eight, explained how his car had been stolen the previous week and how a friend of his happened to see it in the evening in the parking lot of the Intimate Lounge on John R. Gary said he went over there with a baseball bat to wait for whoever stole it to come out of the lounge and get in the car, a '78 VW Scirocco. Gary stated that he waited in the vicinity of Local 771 UAW-CIO headquarters, which is between the Intimate Lounge and the American La France Fire Equipment Company. At approximately 1:30 A.M. he saw the Silver Mark VI traveling at a high rate of speed south on John R with a black Buick like nailed to its tail. He heard tires squeal and thought the two cars had turned the corner onto Remington. He was on the north side of Local 771, in other words away from the American La France parking lot, so he didn't actually see what happened. But he did hear something that sounded like gunshots. Five of them that he could still hear if he concentrated. Pow, pow, pow, pow-pow. About a minute later he heard what sounded like a woman screaming, but he isn't positive about that part. Was he sure the black car was a Buick? Yes. In fact, Gary said it was an '80 Riviera and he would bet it had red pin-striping on it.

Factor in the torrid couplings of Cruz and Mansell's attorney, Carolyn Wilder; keen observations on race prejudice in all its black, white and brown hues; a mad wild card in the form of some angry Albanians; and a plot line that runs like a lit fuse through the narrative, and you have a book that any other author could have retired on. Makes you wonder what kind of movie Hollywood will make of it.

Despite the injuries the film business has done to Leonard's books, the author remains optimistic about the fate of the rest (Tarantino has optioned three other titles, and Leonard's old pal Walter Mirisch owns the rights to "La Brava"). While Hollywood is the altar some writers have sacrificed their talent upon, Leonard entered into the arrangement with his eyes wide open. He always wanted his books to be made into movies, and he spoke film's language before any director had heard his name. Still, he has learned from his interpreters as well: Tarantino put the racial issues that color Leonard's books front and center in "Jackie Brown" by making Jackie black, while Sonnenfeld turned up the comedy in "Get Shorty" without losing the truth of the tale. "That was one of the things that took me 10 or 15 years to learn," Leonard said, "to loosen up and let this kind of humor seep into the books, and not be so serious about crime."

"Be Cool" is the first book he has written that he knew would be made into a film and it is, alas, not his finest work. Chili's forays into the music business are believable enough (what makes Hollywood Dutch country is that people can be who they say they are there), but the story seems tired, a virtual rehash of "Get Shorty" without the affection the author clearly felt in that book for B-movie legends-in-their-minds like Harry Zim or tragic Hollywood wannabes like Chili's opposite number, Bo Catlett. Chili and Catlett -- one a loan shark, the other a drug dealer -- are both self-made and want to play the movie game, but Catlett makes the mistake of believing his own bullshit. "That's how you tell the good guys from the bad guys," Leonard once said. "To me, the good guy is the one who's natural. He's cool in that way; he's not playing a role. The bad guys are all playing roles, wanting to be somebody else."

John Travolta is the seeming engine driving the sequel, and more power to him. Chili Palmer is the best role of his career, savvy and streetwise but with a sense of humor about the effect he has on others. (Think of him uttering the film's signature line, "Look at me"; it's enough to make you want to look his way.) And though the formula of both "Get Shorty" and "Be Cool" is fish-out-of-water (gangster as movie producer, gangster as music promoter -- the latter not being that much of a stretch), Chili is a classic Leonard hero, at play in a world of new possibilities. The rules of his gangster world are the same as they are in Hollywood: Awareness is paramount and the smartest man -- or woman -- wins. (Drug and alcohol abusers, like Louis Gara in "Rum Punch," don't fare well in Leonard's world: Losing your edge can be fatal.) But more important than winning is enjoying the ride. Asked what he knows about the music business in "Be Cool," Chili takes a guess. "I have a hunch," he says, "there aren't any rules to speak of. You can go for whatever you can get away with, threaten a couple of times to walk out and see if they'll throw in some perks."

Chili could be talking about some other racket in some other town, of course: gambling in Vegas or smuggling in Miami. Leonard is one of our most democratic writers; his stories are not confined by geography or class. Maybe that is why he still has our attention, why after all these years we still look at him: The man is listening to us.

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