18 Reasons Why We'll Miss The World Of Elmore Leonard

By Joanna Robinson | Lists | August 21, 2013 |

We lost an amazing storyteller yesterday. One of our finest. And because I’m first and foremost a book lover, I want to tell you to run, not walk, and pick up a stack of Leonard titles. Read them. Read every last one.

But since this is a pop-culture site, it’s also worth honoring the ways in which Leonard left his fingerprints all over our film and television landscape. With his funny, stylish stories of the delicious and dangerous friction that occurs when good guys rub up against bad, Leonard never failed to entertain us. And just because he didn’t write every word of the famous adaptations of his novels doesn’t mean his voice can’t be heard throughout. In fact, famously, the writing staff of the FX drama “Justified” used “What Would Elmore Do?” as their unofficial motto. These were, unmistakably, his worlds. Worlds that bled together, themes that resonated. Whether we’re in the Deep South or the West Coast, the here and now or the way back when, Leonard’s heroes and villains are always, just, so cool. So though we’ve lost the storyteller, we still have the stories he told. We’ll always have them. So this is just a little reminder of what we’ve lost. We’ll not see his like again.

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