Elmore Leonard returns with 37th novel, 'Tishomingo Blues'

BLOOMFIELD TOWNSHIP, Mich. -- Elmore Leonard removes a cigarette from his mouth and blows smoke into the air as he talks about the bad guys who populate his best-selling crime novels.

"It's not that I like them. I kind of sympathize with them because they're dumb," the author says.

They make mistakes, he says, "but they still have pretty much the same desires that you and I do. ... They're not always snarling and thinking about crime or doing something bad, something evil. They all have mothers. I think about that."

Slim, bespectacled and smallish, Leonard appears much less dangerous than the thieves, gangsters and drug runners he writes about in novels like "Killshot" and "Freaky Deaky."

His 37th novel, the recently released "Tishomingo Blues," features a Detroit con man as the central character.

Leonard says the novel is his "favorite so far," though he wouldn't elaborate. It features the elements of many of the author's previous efforts: deadpan dialogue, nefarious characters and unexpected plot twists.

Set in Tunica, Miss., the book is written mainly from the point of view of two characters: the con man Robert Taylor and Dennis Lenahan, a stunt diver who has been hired to perform a high-dive show for patrons of the Tishomingo Lodge & Casino.

While preparing for his show, Lenahan witnesses an execution and is placed in the middle of a turf war between Taylor and his associates from Detroit and a local organized crime outfit called the "Dixie Mafia."

'Seems like a natural'

Leonard says he started with the idea of Lenahan, then added Taylor to counterbalance the Dixie Mafia.

"I start with a character, then I add a character. ... I was at the end of 'Pagan Babies,' when I thought of a high diver," he said. "I just became interested in the idea of a high diver as the main character, because it just seems like a natural. The guy risks serious injury or his life every day."

"It's so sly how he pulls you into his book," says Mike Lupica, a New York Daily News sports columnist.

"You think it's about Dennis. ... It's like he calls to the bullpen. Then he brings in Robert Taylor, who's just one of the best characters he ever wrote," says Lupica, who has been friends with Leonard ever since he interviewed him for Esquire magazine in the 1980s.

Leonard, critics have said, stands apart from other novelists because of the way his characters speak.

"They're serious. It's kind of flat and deadpan, the whole thing. This is how I see my material," Leonard said.

Leonard could have relied solely on Gregg Sutter, his longtime researcher, for help on the book, but instead, he trekked down to Panama City, Fla., where he spent the day with a group of stunt divers.

For his best seller, "Be Cool," Leonard researched the world of pop music with a trip to Los Angeles, where he spent time with producer Rick Rubin and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

"He's the coolest person I know," Lupica says. "He's smart, he's hip, he's current, he's funny."

Since the mid-1980s, Leonard has written about a book a year and has received widespread attention partly due to the success of movies made from his work, including "Get Shorty," "Jackie Brown" and "Out of Sight."

A children's book

At a time when many 76-year-olds might consider slowing down, he is at work fulfilling a three-book deal he signed last summer with new publisher William Morrow. He is juggling several projects: a novel about a Hollywood stuntman who returns home to his native Oklahoma in the 1930s, a novella and his first children's book.

A children's book?

"I have five kids and 11 grandchildren, so I've made up a lot of stories in my time," Leonard says.