SOURCE: "Indictments," in New York Review of Books, Vol. XXXIV, No. 13, August 13, 1987, pp. 50-1.

In the following excerpt, Edwards provides a largely positive assessment of Bandits.

Even those who don't care for crime fiction may like what Elmore Leonard makes of it, especially his way of representing common or low American voices. Consider this splendid speech in Bandits, by an old but still lively Louisiana bank robber banished by his relatives to a shabby nursing home:

"My boy wanted me to stay with them, I mean live there," Cullen said. "It was Mary Jo was the problem. She'd been thinking about having a nervous breakdown ever since [her daughter] Joellen run off to Muscle Shoals to become a recording artist…. See, Mary Jo, all she knows how to do is keep house. She don't watch TV, she either waxes furniture or makes cookies or sews on buttons. I...