Elmore Leonard’s Lessons in Cool

Fans of the late Elmore Leonard (left) know his crime writing by its sense of place—a gritty version of Detroit that Professor of English Charles Rzepka describes as “crowded, dirty, parochial, demographically diverse, built up and boarded up, spread out and burned out.” They delight in his mastery of sound, says Rzepka, in the “curt back-hands” of his characters’ speech and the “ragged thoughts muttering along in their heads.” Above all, readers revel in Leonard’s evocative characters.

In Being Cool: The Work of Elmore Leonard, Rzepka draws from more than 12 hours of personal interviews with the author to explore what makes “the Dickens of Detroit” so cool. Leonard’s 45 novels and more than 40 short stories are populated by, as Rzepka writes, “a well-trained ensemble of gangbangers, dope-dealers, bookies, and grifters and an intriguing assortment of psychopaths; by financial advisors, talent agents, shady attorneys, and their nouveau-riche clients; by female professionals ranging from hookers to singers to models to airline attendants to embassy personnel; by honest cops hampered by legal niceties and crooked cops on the take, Hollywood phonies and Delta mobsters, hanging judges and hit men, and dozens of eccentric blue-collar, beer-drinking extras.” It shows even the most devilish characters can inspire our sympathy, and heroes are never cliché.

—Lara Ehrlich

Eat, Drink, and Be Merry

As a caterer in the 1970s, Merry White’s food choices seemed bold and innovative to most US cooks, who had become enamored of fast convenience foods and were still unfamiliar with international cuisine. The professor of anthropology’s moussaka and tabbouleh are no longer revolutionary to modern palates, but her 40th edition of Cooking for Crowds can still tantalize. White can tell you how to make 50 servings of Chicken Paprikash—for starters, you’ll need 36 pounds of chicken thighs. And sprinkled among the recipes are bits of good advice for catering to party-sized gatherings, such as how to properly multiply a recipe so it still tastes like the original. In the new introduction, White notes that in the 1970s, fellow academics suggested she strike food writing from her résumé “if [she] wanted an academic career,” which goes to show how times—as well as tastes—have changed.

—Rachel Johnson