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Picket Line and Other Stories
Three stories - the never-before-published 'Picket Line', along with 'Chick Killer' and 'Ice Man' - showing Elmore Leonard at his most terse and thrilling
'Like all of Leonard’s books, Picket Line is a taut and engaging tale. Crime dramas made Leonard famous, but this is a social-justice story. . . . Leonard renders their adventures and their thoughts in spare, elegant, Hemingway-inspired prose. . . . Picket Line builds a convincing portrait of the spirit of a lost, idealistic age. . . . It has the cinematic mastery of scene and dialogue that characterized Leonard’s later works' - Héctor Tobar, The New York Times
There are some lines you should never cross...
Trouble is in the air at Stanzik Farms, Texas. The workers have gone on strike and tensions are threatening to boil over. As secrets come to a head and migrant workers, cops, foremen, agitators and union bosses collide at the picket line, things start to get very rough indeed. Elmore Leonard’s brilliantly orchestrated, never-before-published story Picket Line is accompanied here by two more terse tales of ruthless enforcers and tense stand-offs, riffing on the thing that made him his extraordinary ear for dialogue, and for creating situations where the stakes could not be higher for the loser.
'Like all of Leonard’s books, Picket Line is a taut and engaging tale. Crime dramas made Leonard famous, but this is a social-justice story. . . . Leonard renders their adventures and their thoughts in spare, elegant, Hemingway-inspired prose. . . . Picket Line builds a convincing portrait of the spirit of a lost, idealistic age. . . . It has the cinematic mastery of scene and dialogue that characterized Leonard’s later works' - Héctor Tobar, The New York Times
There are some lines you should never cross...
Trouble is in the air at Stanzik Farms, Texas. The workers have gone on strike and tensions are threatening to boil over. As secrets come to a head and migrant workers, cops, foremen, agitators and union bosses collide at the picket line, things start to get very rough indeed. Elmore Leonard’s brilliantly orchestrated, never-before-published story Picket Line is accompanied here by two more terse tales of ruthless enforcers and tense stand-offs, riffing on the thing that made him his extraordinary ear for dialogue, and for creating situations where the stakes could not be higher for the loser.
112 pages, Paperback
Published October 2, 2025
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About the author
Elmore Leonard
213 books3,716 followersElmore John Leonard lived in Dallas, Oklahoma City and Memphis before settling in Detroit in 1935. After serving in the navy, he studied English literature at the University of Detroit where he entered a short story competition. His earliest published novels in the 1950s were westerns, but Leonard went on to specialize in crime fiction and suspense thrillers, many of which have been adapted into motion pictures.
Father of Peter Leonard.
Father of Peter Leonard.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 30, 2025
As a big Elmore Leonard fan when I saw there was a ‘new’ previously unpublished novella released I knew I just had to read it.
The Picket Line is not a crime story as such but deals with the various characters who are caught up in a unauthorised strike on a melon plantation in 1970. The majority of workers are Latinos and are striking for better pay and the story relates the events of one day on the picket line. The story is told from the different viewpoints of the characters, some still working in the fields and others on strike and on the picket line. There is the Vietnam Vet turned cop, the plantation foreman, the Union representative and also a white man who is working as a picker in the fields. The prose is sharp and lean and is classic Leonard but what lets it down for me was the ending. It seems to end abruptly and it actually feels like part of a longer piece of work that wasn’t actually finished ?
There are two other stories that make up the book. One deals with a female law enforcement officer retelling the story of an unusual arrest of a male suspect in a bar and the other, which appears very relevant in today’s current climate in America, tells the story of an I.C.E. Officer’s detention of a group of Native Americans.
The Picket Line is not a crime story as such but deals with the various characters who are caught up in a unauthorised strike on a melon plantation in 1970. The majority of workers are Latinos and are striking for better pay and the story relates the events of one day on the picket line. The story is told from the different viewpoints of the characters, some still working in the fields and others on strike and on the picket line. There is the Vietnam Vet turned cop, the plantation foreman, the Union representative and also a white man who is working as a picker in the fields. The prose is sharp and lean and is classic Leonard but what lets it down for me was the ending. It seems to end abruptly and it actually feels like part of a longer piece of work that wasn’t actually finished ?
There are two other stories that make up the book. One deals with a female law enforcement officer retelling the story of an unusual arrest of a male suspect in a bar and the other, which appears very relevant in today’s current climate in America, tells the story of an I.C.E. Officer’s detention of a group of Native Americans.
October 22, 2025
Besides a collection of his unpublished short stories appearing the year after his death in 2013, Picket Line is the first new fiction from Elmore Leonard in 11 years. An unpublished novella from his archive, Picket Line is bundled in with a couple of previously published short stories, Chick Killer and Ice Man, as they match Picket Line’s theme of law enforcement figures butting heads with ethnic minorities.
I have really enjoyed some of Leonard’s novels previously (Raylan, Road Dogs, Be Cool) so I’d like to say this is a hidden gem, but unfortunately Picket Line is actually quite a dull story. It’s about Mexican fruit pickers in California, some of whom are trying to form a union and strike against their corporate overlords, while local law enforcement does their best to disrupt their protest.
The prose is very smooth and Leonard’s dialogue is as solid as it ever was - my main gripe is that nothing really happens for much of it. We meet the characters, their roles are established, and then they stand around performing those roles until something finally does happen towards the end (nothing that exciting) and then it’s over. It’s a very boring read.
Chick Killer and Ice Man are similarly forgettable - more so given their brevity. Karen Cisco recounts a difficult arrest in Chick Killer and some native Americans get bullied by an ICE agent at a rodeo in Ice Man. Again, well written, just not at all interesting to read.
The surprise of seeing a new book from a dead author is what prompted me to pick up Picket Line but, besides that novelty, there isn’t much here to attract readers. One for the fans only, though I think if you’re a crime fiction fan and haven’t read any Elmore Leonard, check out his other, more well-known books over this one - he’s definitely an author worth reading.
I have really enjoyed some of Leonard’s novels previously (Raylan, Road Dogs, Be Cool) so I’d like to say this is a hidden gem, but unfortunately Picket Line is actually quite a dull story. It’s about Mexican fruit pickers in California, some of whom are trying to form a union and strike against their corporate overlords, while local law enforcement does their best to disrupt their protest.
The prose is very smooth and Leonard’s dialogue is as solid as it ever was - my main gripe is that nothing really happens for much of it. We meet the characters, their roles are established, and then they stand around performing those roles until something finally does happen towards the end (nothing that exciting) and then it’s over. It’s a very boring read.
Chick Killer and Ice Man are similarly forgettable - more so given their brevity. Karen Cisco recounts a difficult arrest in Chick Killer and some native Americans get bullied by an ICE agent at a rodeo in Ice Man. Again, well written, just not at all interesting to read.
The surprise of seeing a new book from a dead author is what prompted me to pick up Picket Line but, besides that novelty, there isn’t much here to attract readers. One for the fans only, though I think if you’re a crime fiction fan and haven’t read any Elmore Leonard, check out his other, more well-known books over this one - he’s definitely an author worth reading.
October 20, 2025
Not a complete story (a long shelved first act of a never completed novel, scavenged for parts of Mr Majestyk) but still unpublished writing from the greatest of all time, so much to celebrate
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews