Law at Randado Book

Elmore Leonard’s early western novels show a gifted short story writer learning how to master the longer narrative form. The Bounty Hunters (1953) is a sometimes awkward attempt to extend and enlarge characters and situations that would make sharply conceived material for short stories but thin out and lose focus over the length of a novel.

The Law at Randado shows him still learning, but he’s turning what he knows of the short story into what holds together well for its 250 pages and more than maintains our interest. The novel still reads like a series of short stories, but each flows smoothly into the next, with continuing characters, and a central thread linking two of them, a sheriff and a young deputy he has hired...

More at my blog.