Drawing on unprecedented archival and family access, Cooler Than Cool: The Life of Elmore Leonard, is the first comprehensive biography of the master American crime writer, author of witty, gritty bestsellers like Get Shorty and Raylan.

Over the course of his sixty-year career, Elmore Leonard, “the Dickens of Detroit,” published forty-five novels that have had enduring appeal to readers around the world. Revered by Martin Amis, Margaret Atwood, Raymond Carver, and Stephen King, his books were innovative in their blending of a Hemingway-inspired noirish minimalism and a masterful use of realistic dialogue over exposition—a direct evolution spurred by his years as a screenwriter.

Leonard’s fiction contained many layers, and at the heart of his work were progressive themes, stemming from his years as a student of the Jesuit religious order, his personal beliefs in social justice, and his successful battle over alcoholism. He drew inspiration from greats like Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, but the true motivation and brilliance behind his crime writing was the ongoing class struggle to achieve the American Dream—often seen through the eyes of law enforcement officers and the criminals they vowed to apprehend.