I first became aware of Elmore Leonard while attending a 1985 writer's conference in Mankato. During one of our lunch periods I was seated with Joe Soucheray who told us about a novel he was working on. He was about six chapters in at the time, trying to write like Elmore Leonard, whom he considered the gold standard when it comes to this kind of storytelling.
Over the next two decades I probably read half of his 50 or so novels as well as some of his short story collections. When I later wrote my own first novel, The Red Scorpion, there were elements of the story patterned after Leonard. Create interesting characters and put them an in interesting situation. The hero must be heroic and the bad characters truly scary and -- assuming the reader still cares about your hero -- there's something at risk, usually life and death.
This week I picked up The Moonshine War, which Leonard wrote earlier in his career. As has often been the case, I could hardly put it down. It takes place in the hills of Eastern Kentucky, a region that Leonard must have been familiar with because he's had stories there before and he knows both the setting and the moonshiner's world so well. My own grandfather was a moonshiner. When the revenuers (Federal agents) came to bust the stills he fled to West Virginia with his seven-month-pregnant wife. My father was born there two months later.
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The central hero in The Moonshine War is Son Martin, a quiet man who makes good shine. His father has passed away, and he also lost his wife previous to the beginning of this story. He's a respectful and respected young man with a few quirky habits. Early on we learn that he also has secrets.
During the war (WWI, not this moonshine war) he confided to another man--Frank Long--a secret that he immediately regretted sharing. His father had produced 150 barrels of primo moonshine to be aged for eight years that he'd hidden somewhere, and now Son Martin was to be the heir. Its value would be astronomical.
Frank Long had a memory like an elephant, and the notion of acquiring Son Martin's fortune was eating him alive. Son Martin's moment of weakness was now coming back to bite him, like a rattler in those lush Kentucky hills.
Long has made a plan. His scheme: to pose as a Federal agent and bust Son Martin's neighbor moonshiners to pressure Son into yielding up his treasure. Things go awry when Long recruits some bad men be his "muscle" on this scheme. Very early in the story you encounter a couple of truly scary bad guys, and Frank Long lives to regret what he has set in motion. Lesson here: Don't play with fire.
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Elmore Leonard is skilled at building the kind of tension that keeps readers turning the pages. His characters and stories feel authentic, so much so that in this case some readers will have a problem with the book. It takes place in the summer of 1931 and Son Martin has a black man named Aaron helping take care of his place. In Eastern Kentucky during those days Aaron would be been referred to with the n-word. Modern readers may disregard the heroic nature of the man Leonard paints here, or the special bond Aaron and Son share. They will stumble over the fact that this word is used in the book.
For what it's worth, Elmore Leonard is a master. Hollywood must think so as so many of his books have been turned into films. If you like liked the movies--3:10 to Yuma, Hombre, Get Shorty, Out of Sight, Mr. Majestyk, and nearly two dozen more--you will love the books.
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