George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez on a poster for *Out of Sight* (1998), an adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s novel of the same name.

The Dickens of Detroit

On the centenary of Elmore Leonard’s birth, a look back at how the American novelist redefined the crime genre with his colorful characters and unvarnished prose

By Malcolm Forbes

In 2001, The New York Times published an essay by Elmore Leonard in which the celebrated crime author outlined his 10 golden rules of writing. For the casual reader, it may have been an interesting article; for the aspiring writer, it should have been expert advice; and for the Leonard aficionado, it would have been a recognizable rubric, a tried-and-tested set of instructions that the so-called Dickens of Detroit had worked his magic from for 60 years.

Leonard’s 10 commandments ranged from the semi-comic (“Never open a book with weather”) to the deadly serious (“Never use an adverb to modify the verb ‘said’”; to do so was, for Leonard, “a mortal sin”). Simplicity was key—any “hooptedoodle,” quoting John Steinbeck, meaning distracting digressions or flights of fancy, should be avoided.