52 Pickup (30 page)
Authors: Elmore Leonard
“Was he in it?”
“Who?”
“Jazik,” Kolib said. Like, who else?
“I don't know,” Mitchell said. “Somebody was.”
“I'll call the fire department. Twice in two days. We're keeping them guys busy, eh?” Koliba started to move away. He glanced back to see Mitchell taking his attaché case from the metal shelf against the wall. “You want me to call the cops too?”
“If you want to,” Mitchell said. He was taking the lady by the arm again as he looked at Koliba. “But who're they going to arrest?”
Elmore Leonard
has written more than three dozen books during his highly successful writing career, including the national bestsellers
Tishomingo Blues
,
Pagan Babies
, and
Be Cool
. Many of his novels have been made into movies, including
Get Shorty
,
Out of Sight
,
Valdez Is Coming
, and
Rum Punch
(as Quentin Tarantino's
Jackie Brown
). He has been named Grand Master by Mystery Writers of America and lives in Bloomfield Village, Michigan, with his wife.
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ELMORE LEONARD
52-PICKUP
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“The reigning master of hard-action crime fiction.”
Cincinnati Enquirer
“Vintage Leonard . . . 52
Pickup
features engaging underdogs and exceptional dialogue . . . . For sheer entertainment of the hard-boiled variety, it's hard to beat Elmore Leonard.”
Christian Science Monitor
“Leonard has been lauded as America's greatest crime novelist . . . and with reason . . . Reading an Elmore Leonard crime novel is a little like prowling through someone else's dresser drawer. You find some surprising things, plus there's the cheap thrill of doing something fairly illicit to add a little kick to the experience.”
Dallas Morning News
“Leonard is the real thing . . . . He raises the hard-boiled suspense novel beyond the limits of genre and into social commentary . . . . He does honest work, and reading it is a great pleasure.
”
Washington Post Book World
“America's
éminence grise
of crime fiction . . . If you want a good story about bad guys, Elmore Leonard is your man . . . . Populated with garrulous cops and con men, Leonard's books have the loose-limbed rhythm of an Al Green song, every character's voice in perfect pitch.”
Los Angeles Times
“Nobody but nobody on the current scene can match his ability to serve up violence so light-handedly, with so supremely deadpan a flourish.”
Detroit News
“A tremendous stylist whose tightly woven plots are filled with crackling dialogue and quirky characters. Leonard's work is hip, fast-paced, and intensely visual . . . [with] morbid humor and an overwhelming sense of cool . . . filled with absurdity, violence, and wildly idiosyncratic characters.”
New York Daily News
“Leonard is a terrific writer who fills his page with rat-a-tat one-liners, vivid descriptions, and irreverent takes on almost everything.”
Denver Post
“Nuance, character, and understatement are the hallmarks of Leonard's crime fiction . . . .Â
52 Pickup
is hard for readers to set down.”
Sarasota Herald-Tribune
“A tightly wound thriller with a smash-up climax.”
The Village Voice
“While Leonard excels at low-life suspense, he's also a master fiction writer whose gift for dialogue and cunningly meandering plots any novelist would envy.”
San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle
“Elmore Leonard's work is easy to praise . . . . He has produced some of the tightest and most vivid storytelling in postwar popular culture . . . . Leonard's novels have a spare, ironic style, sparkling dialogue, and characters that are drawn with gritty, edgy texture . . . . Leonard's plots are masterpieces of intricacy and surprise . . . . A dedicated professional whose skill and craft provide enormous satisfaction for us, his work is among the best that popular fiction has to offer.”
Dubuque Telegraph Herald
“Leonard writes tough . . . . And he has the guts and compassion, along with sheer craftsmanship, to back up any tough tale he chooses to arm wrestle.”
Chicago Sun-Times
“Leonard gives us as much serious fun per word as anyone around.”
New York Times Book Review
“The King Daddy of crime novels.”
Seattle Times
“Every species of criminal inhabits his novels, from teen Street thugs to retired forgers, health-conscious Mafia dons to gun molls with liberal arts degrees. He does black people, white people, and Latinos with equal ease and with the same deadshot ear, funny little speech tics, and quirky expressions . . . . No, you won't find the meaning of life in any of these books, but their slow-burning humor and vivid characters are the essence of good storytelling.”
Newsday
“His slick dialogue, scheming characters, and riveting tales have made Leonard the best crime writer working today . . . [and] the envy of writers everywhere . . . Leonard's books are written in crisp sequences, crackle with dialogue, always move the story forward, and invariably trigger vivid images.”
Bergen Record
“Leonard's cinematic grasp of scene and setting, his ability to arouse within us a helpless sympathy for even the lowest of his characters, his quirky pacing and plot twists, and his sly humor and artfully oddball prose sear our eyeballs and keep the pages turning.”
Miami Herald
“Leonard always perfectly captures on the page the funky, funny world of misfit losers.”
Los Angeles Daily News
“No one writes better dialogue. No one conveys society's seedier or marginal characters more convincingly . . . . Leonard's sardonic view of the world proves immensely entertaining, and not a little thought-provoking.”
Detroit Free Press
“The freshest chronicler of the crime scene to come around since Damon Runyan.”
Arkansas Gazette
“Everything Elmore Leonard touches turns to gold. He has a wonderful ear . . . . And when it comes to plotting, he has more moves than Bobby Fischer.”
Boston Globe
“Elmore Leonard has the best ear for dialogue in the crime-writing biz.”
Playboy
“Leonard is tops in his field . . . . In Leonard's sleazy world you always meet interesting characters . . . . I'm an Elmore Leonard groupie.”
New Orleans Times-Picayune
“Elmore Leonard is the king!”
Houston Chronicle
The Bounty Hunters
The Law at Randado
Escape from Five Shadows
Last Stand at Saber River
Hombre
The Big Bounce
The Moonshine War
Valdez Is Coming
Forty Lashes Less One
Mr. Majestyk
52 Pickup
Swag
Unknown Man #89
The Hunted
The Switch
Gunsights
Gold Coast
City Primeval
Split Images
Cat Chaster
Stick
LaBrava
Glitz
Bandits
Touch
Freaky Deaky
Killshot
Get Shorty
Maximum Bob
Rum Punch
Pronto
Riding the Rap
Out of Sight
Cuba Libre
The Tonto Woman and Other Western Stories
Be Cool
Pagan Babies
Tishomingo Blues
Cover photograph © by BortN66/Shutterstock Images
First Published in Great Britain 1974 by Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
52 PICKUP.
Copyright © 1974 by Elmore Leonard. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © NOVEMBER 2002 ISBN: 9780061802317
Version 01112013
First HarperTorch paperback printing: August 2002
First Avon Books paperback printing: December 1983
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