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Title: Charlie Martz and Other Stories
Subtitle: The Unpublished Stories
Author: Elmore Leonard
Narrator: Will Patton, Mark Bramhall, George Newbern, Tish Hicks, Nick Toren
Format: Unabridged
Length: 7 hrs and 33 mins
Language: English
Release date: 06-16-15
Publisher: HarperAudio
Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 4 votes
Genres: Fiction, Short Stories & Anthologies
Publisher's Summary:
A collection of 15 stories, 11 of which have never been previously published, from the early career of best-selling American master Elmore Leonard.
Over his long and illustrious career, Elmore Leonard was recognized as one of the greatest crime writers of all time, the author of dozens of best-selling books - many adapted for the big screen - as well as a master of short fiction. A superb stylist whose crisp, tight prose crackles with trademark wit and sharp dialogue, Leonard remains the standard for crime fiction and a literary model for writers of every genre.
Marked by his unmistakable grit and humor, the stories in Charlie Martz and Other Stories - produced early in his career, when he was making his name particularly with Westerns - reveal a writer in transition, exploring new voices and locations, from the bars of small-town New Mexico and Michigan to a film set in Hollywood, a hotel in Southern Spain, even a military base in Kuala Lumpur. They also introduce us to classic Leonard characters, some who recur throughout the collection, such as aging lawman Charlie Martz and weary former matador Eladio Montoya.
Devoted Leonard aficionados and fans new to his fiction will marvel at these early works that reveal an artist on the cusp of greatness.
Critic Reviews:
"Kudos to all the narrators, especially Tish Hicks." (AudioFile)
Members Reviews:
And the Reason for Publishing Is....?
Leonard, of course, is an acknowledged master of at least two genres: the western and the gritty urban crime novel. At some point in his career he wove in another genre, the dufus comic pop novel as the crimes migrated beyond Detroit to Hollywood and Florida. The earlier characters could be somewhat archetypal -- or, more critically -- stock, but without losing their archetypal flavor the later characters, like Rylans, were deliberately exaggerated and individualized.
I'm beginning this review a little off the subject of the stories in the current collection to remind myself how good and special Leonard's writing came to be because these early (?) stories range from predictable to embarrassingly awful. They were either apprentice work or, if they were later (many of them aren't even dated so who knows?) they were efforts -- as an other reviewer noted -- that deserved to stay in the drawer.
Every good artist produces bad work from time to time. It's inevitable because the only way you get better is by practicing your art and no matter who you are the statistics catch up with you. Produce enough masterpieces like Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue" and "In a Silent Way" and eventually there will be "Doo-Bop."
There are a few reasons for ever letting this stuff see the light after the artist's death. One is that when an artist is important enough -- and Leonard is surely sufficiently important for this to apply -- scholars can better understand the artist by seeing what failure looks like. Younger writers can see how Leonard's mature career developed from a genre novelist's rather ordinary beginnings --through immense amounts of practice.