Leonard's bandwagon had left the station by the time I heard its music, and I've had to do some running to catch up. But better late than never: Leonard is the real thing. He doesn't write "literature," and I'd be astonished if he claimed to; there's nothing in his fiction to suggest that he packs even an ounce of pretentiousness. But like John D. MacDonald, whom he resembles but does not appear to imitate, he raises the hardboiled suspense novel beyond the limits of genre and into social commentary; he paints an acute, funny and sometimes very bitter picture of a world that is all too real and recognizable, yet a world that rarely makes an appearance in the kind of fiction that is routinely given serious consideration.
It is a world in which people do business; they don't often do it honestly, but in one form or another business is what they do. This is the great untouched subject in contemporary American fiction: the focus round which American life revolves, yet which American writers resolutely ignore. As a character in Stick puts it: "Anyway, what's my goal, the American dream. What else? Put money in some gimmick everybody has to have, get rich and retire. No more worries, no more looking over your shoulder." Making a buck: it's a story rooted as deeply as any other in the American tradition, yet when it comes to telling it in fiction, only a handful of suspense writers and an occasional peddler of schlock are willing to take up the challenge.
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