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Arts & Entertainment

Elmore Leonard Talks About Having Fun, Actors Who Click and a Dad's Pride

At Writers Live event at Baldwin Library, the famed local author and his son discuss their craft and their characters.

More than a family name unites two local authors who spoke Thursday night at . Peter and Elmore Leonard each mix dark humor with violence and historic context with contemporary plots.

Now for the first time, they also share a publication date. Raylan, the 46th book by Elmore Leonard, 86, went on sale Tuesday. So did Voices of the Dead, the fourth novel in four years by his son Peter, 61.

For the senior author, the 90-minute appearance was a hometown stop amid a four-city publicity tour that began two days earlier in Beverly Hills, CA, heads to New York next week and ends near Chicago a week after that. Thursday's event, which drew a standing-room crowd of about 150 people, was co-sponsored by Book Beat, an independent bookstore in Oak Park.    

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The format was loose — no book readings, just two guys trading shop talk at a bare table as the son tossed familiar questions to his dad. "What about some of the actors you've known?" brought anecdotes about George Clooney ("my favorite"), Steve McQueen, Lee Majors and Burt Reynolds (definitely not a favorite).

'An awful lot of fun'

The conversation, part of the library's Writers Live series, often circled back to writing.

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Each man began his career writing ads, and the son described ditching his partnership at a former Birmingham agency after seeing "how happy and relaxed Elmore was just sitting home in a T-shirt and writing." The master confirmed: "I've had an awful lot of fun writing."   

Tools for putting words on paper differ between the generations. The parent creates first drafts with a pen and legal pad, while his offspring taps on a computer keyboard. The senior Leonard, who lives in Bloomfield Township, never leaves a scene unfinished when he knocks off for the day. "That's what I've done all my life, for 60 years now, and it's worked out," he said.

His huge fan base has expanded since 2010 to include TV watchers who know his character U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens from the Emmy-winning FX series Justified that started a third season Tuesday. The new book's jacket shows its star, Timothy Olyphant, who was just 25 when Leonard introduced the quick-draw, Stetson-wearing lawman in Pronto back in 1993.

Hearing characters come alive

"I love Tim because he does the guy exactly as I wrote him," said Leonard, who's credited as executive producer on the show — a largely honorary title as the characters' creator.  "When I watch it, I think every (actor) is right on the dime. The accents are perfect. They make the scenes. They're really good."

During a studio set visit this week before his Beverly Hills reading, Leonard said he praised Natalie Zea (who plays Winona Hawkins) and Joelle Carter (Ava Crowder) for their pitch-perfect Kentucky diction.

In the 272-page new book, Givens pursues pot-dealing brothers who branch into the sale of transplant organs in Harlan County, KY.

The younger Leonard, a Birmingham resident who has a different publisher, sets his 320-page paperback in Detroit, Washington and Munich, Germany, in 1971. The vengeance drama pits Detroit scrap metal dealer Harry Levin, a Holocaust survivor, against a German diplomat who kills Levin's daughter while driving drunk in Washington, D.C. 

Stepping out of dad's shadow

"It's not a story he would have written," the author said, glancing at his tablemate. "I had to go all the way to Munich to get away from him."

The idea for Voices of the Dead germinated after a mid-1970s visit to the former Dachau concentration camp in Germany. More recently, he did weeks of library research at the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills. "I would sit there for hours at a time and make notes or photocopies," he said. "I'd go home every night and feel depressed, so I added some humor to the story."  

In a two-page introduction, his proud parent says reviewing his son's manuscripts is easy because "I haven't done much more than circle typos."

At the library, sounding like the adman he once was, he gave a celebrity endorsement: "I'll vouch for it — it's a terrific book." He also promotes Voices of the Dead at elmoreleonard.com with a cover photo and review blurb — under his own, of course.

Though Thursday's easygoing banter included anecdotes polished through retelling, it also showed genuine affection and respect. "I'm still learning from him," the son said. "Elmore comes over for dinner two or three times a week, and we talk about characters and plots."         

But they won't collaborate as co-authors. "It wouldn't work," Elmore Leonard responded when asked. "When you write a book, you want your voice in it. I've never read a book with two names on the cover. I'd wonder who wrote it."  

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