Pulp Fiction discussion

For the May 2025 Group Read our topic was Edgar Award for Best Novel Winners, and our winner - by one vote in an exciting runoff poll - was LA BRAVA by "the filet of the genre" Elmore Leonard.

Elmore Leonard didn’t start in crime—he started with cowboys. In the 1950s, he was writing lean, fast-paced Westerns while working as an ad man in Detroit. But by the '70s and '80s, he'd become the king of cool crime fiction, with a signature style so tight and rhythmic it practically breathed on the page. Quentin Tarantino once called him “the greatest crime writer alive,” and you can feel Leonard’s fingerprints on everything from Justified to Breaking Bad.

La Brava won the Edgar Award for Best Novel in 1984, and it’s easy to see why. Set in sun-bleached, seedy Miami, it’s a novel that oozes atmosphere and attitude, filled with sharp dialogue, offbeat characters, and a sense of danger that simmers rather than explodes. You don’t read Leonard for plot twists—you read him for the way people talk, the way they move, and the way violence creeps in with a shrug rather than a bang.

Leonard always had one foot in pulp fiction and the other in literary crime. His early paperbacks were published alongside the likes of Jim Thompson and Charles Willeford, and he never lost that grit. But his prose was deceptively refined—stripped down, never showy, always in service of voice and character. La Brava is a perfect example of his style at its peak: effortless, funny, dangerous.

A fun fact: Leonard famously wrote "10 Rules of Writing," the most quoted of which is “If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.” That kind of ethos—clean, unpretentious, character-first storytelling—is what made La Brava stand out to the Mystery Writers of America. It wasn’t just a good book. It was the kind of book that made crime fiction feel like jazz.



Here's Leonard trying to hide behind a stone pillar.

A very good choice for discussion, methinks.
It's been too long since I read an Elmore Leonard, and I liked all the ones I picked up previously. For some reason, I thought I have already read it, but it turns out it was Cuba Libre

I started today, but I will probably review when I come back from vacation next month. Anyway, the first chapters remind me why I like Elmore Leonard in the first place: very dialogue driven storytelling and sly humour, colourful characters and zany plot. It's Florida, after all.
The best part is La Brava working as a photographer, choosing street photography as his focus and doing his own prints, something that aligns with my own hobby well.

I finally got my copy from the library, but I won’t start for a week. I’m at the Jersey Shore for complete relaxation. We have needed a break from the myriad of doctor appointments and tests.

My kindle is loaded with other things. Gosh, im two months behind.

Lawrence wrote: "...Gosh, im two months behind."

Me too! But I'm almost done with Night and the City. That is a really good book. I also need to post thoughts on a couple others. Ah...maybe tomorrow...?

I'm back from Paris, so I hope to get back in the groove with my computer. I finished La Brava just before going on vacation, and I was reminded why Elmore Leonard is considered such a master of the dialogue and why so many of his stories / scripts are filmed. La Brava is one of the better titles from his catalogue.

I finally finished this. I was a little disappointed. I like the interplay between La Brava and the other characters, but it just didn’t hold me. Then again, I was battling illness and nothing seemed to hold my attention. I’ll read Elmore again.