Much crime fiction is formula writing, and since most practitioners of the genre are prolific, producing at least one full-length work a year, they often recycle plots and characters. Many of Leonard's novels have echoes of earlier novels, yet each manages to be different. A discussion of Pronto, his twenty-sixth crime novel, could begin with why, among readers of crime fiction, familiarity breeds content, whereas as the same time they want something new.

1. Is Raylan Givens in the 1994 New Yorker story pretty much the same person as that of the novel, or have his experiences in Pronto changed him?

2. The fugitive Givens escorts in "Riding the Rap" is Dale Crowe Junior, from the Everglades. The hired gun Arno kills in Pronto is Earl Crowe, from the same area. Does this similarity in names, and the likelihood that they are related matter in terms of the novel...