Leonard’s the name, noir’s the game . . . just like dad
Gritty plot, tough women, set in Detroit. Sound familiar? Elmore’s fans won’t be disappointed in son’s first crime novel
Toronto Star
JACK BATTEN
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/Books/article/468039
Peter Leonard has been writing advertising copy for 25 years. It pays the bills. He lives in Birmingham, Mich., with his wife and four kids. Working nights and weekends, Leonard finished his first crime novel not long ago. It’s called Quiver. Especially for a first novel, Quiver is mature, funny, well paced and smartly structured.
Is there a catch in this nice story of long-delayed accomplishment?
There might be if you ask about the first name of Peter Leonard’s father. The answer is Elmore. Peter grew up in a home where his old man happened to be writing some of the greatest books in American crime fiction.
It’s inevitable, reading Quiver, that the reader’s mind drifts to comparisons with the works of Elmore. Early in the book, a principal character named Jack Curran turns up. Immediately, thoughts of other memorable Jacks surface. Jack Foley from Elmore’s terrific 1996 book, Out of Sight. Or Jack Delaney in 1987’s excellent Bandits.
A guy in Quiver says to a woman, “You’re better looking than Sister Mary Andrew who I had in second grade.” Elmore, the reader thinks, would have left out the “who.” Later on, Peter Leonard describes the way a character is talking, “Trying to put a little enthusiasm behind it.” The phrase is reminiscent of a favourite line of Elmore’s: “Not putting too much into it.”
The reflex habit of matching Peter’s style to Elmore’s never quite goes away. The son writes in a manner resembling his father’s. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. But the reader’s impulse to compare does nothing to spoil Quiver’s pleasures, which are legion.
One more mention of Elmore may be relevant. According to a charming interview that Elmore and Peter recently conducted with one another – it can be Googled – Quiver started out as a movie script. Peter rewrote it as a novel when his father, who has a long history with Hollywood, said to him, “Being a screen writer is like wanting to be a co-pilot.”
The book’s story, which is best described as multi-faceted, concerns the efforts of three bad guys, plus one really nasty girlfriend, to shake down a rich widow for as many millions as possible. With these guys, shakedown is a wide-ranging concept. Scamming enters into it of course, but homicide is far from out of the question,
Jack Curran, a Detroit guy, has what passes for the brains of the threesome, though Jack isn’t as slick as he thinks he is. Then comes Teddy from southern Illinois, a dumb and vicious hick. Last is DeJuan, a super cool, inner city Detroit dude. Teddy brings Celeste to the party. She’s blond, shapely, spectacularly tattooed and bad-tempered. Nobody should look sideways at Celeste.
Tension fuels relations among the group. More than three years earlier, the three guys stuck up a supermarket for either $257,000 or $166,000. Jack got caught and did 38 months for armed robbery. He didn’t rat out the other two, but neither did he reveal what happened to the loot.
Teddy and DeJuan think Jack hid it. He didn’t, but everybody’s mad at everybody else, and the only route to recouping is by way of a scheme to separate the widow Kate McCall from her money.
Kate’s late husband, Owen, built a fortune in NASCAR, first as a driver, then as a team owner. Owen and Kate, happily married, had a son named Luke. A few months before the book opens, 16-year-old Luke killed his father in a horrible accident while the two were hunting for deer with bows and arrows.
The kid is practically catatonic with grief. The widow works hard at coping for the two of them. Then Jack, Teddy, DeJuan and Celeste swing into view.
For the rest of the book, with all the characters established in their roles, the story lopes along to an admirably brisk and exciting rhythm. Surprises enliven events. One obvious and unnecessary plot misstep slows the tempo, but only briefly.
In the online interview between the two Leonards, Peter says his favourite character is DeJuan. Elmore more or less agrees. The reader may not. Crime writers seem to embrace their bad guys, all decked out with weird pathologies, getting off on cruel one-liners.
But DeJuan, as with most characters like him, seems just another psychopath. He’s fairly funny in his homeboy way, but what’s so amusing about killing somebody when DeJuan has all the odds, not to mention the weapons, in his favour?
Much more essential to Quiver’s plot, much more interesting and successful as a character, is Kate McCall. The novel wouldn’t click if Peter Leonard couldn’t deliver the goods in shaping Kate into someone strong and dependable. Happily for us readers, he makes Kate into the real thing.
Now in her late 30s, Kate has a back story that works in terms of the plot. Years earlier, after she came out of the University of Michigan, she joined the Peace Corps. She took her good intentions to East Guatemala. While protecting a young Guatemalan woman, she angers the local police chief. He sends two cops to rape and kill Kate. She shoots both cops dead.
When Jack and his colleagues make life hard for Kate and Luke, when they abuse and threaten the woman and her son, we know that Kate has the toughness to resist.
Come to think of it, Kate bears a likeness to Carmen Colson, the housewife in Elmore’s 1989 book, Killshot. In the last pages of Killshot, Carmen drills two bullets into the hitman known as Blackbird. That’s something Peter Leonard’s Kate McCall could handle.
Jack Batten is a Toronto author, novelist and freelance writer. His Whodunit appears every two weeks
Quiver - “A Standout in Every Possible Way
http://www.chrishigh.com/reviews/books/quiver.html
Leonard offspring relies on paternal style
Winnipeg Free Press (Canada)
Reviewed by Bob Armstrong
Take one charming ne’er-do-well, mix with a jive-talking black thug who’s a lot smarter than he looks, a transplanted cracker who’s even more dangerous than he seems, and an attractive woman of a certain age who can handle herself in a man’s world.
That doesn’t mean Quiver won’t serve admirably as a cottage or airplane novel. It’s got the tension you look for in a page-turner and there are sections of clever Leonardian wordplay that present the perceptions of various characters on subjects as varied as nail salons and pimped-out cars.
A standard presence in [Elmore Leonard]’s novels in recent decades has been the charming rogue (Get Shorty’s Chili Palmer, for example) who isn’t really such a bad guy. Jack, too helpfully described as “a cross between George Clooney and Matt Dillon,” seems to be just such a character.
If you’ve read enough of Elmore Leonard’s sardonic, dialogue-driven crime novels, you’ll have figured out the recipe.
Take one charming ne’er-do-well, mix with a jive-talking black thug who’s a lot smarter than he looks, a transplanted cracker who’s even more dangerous than he seems, and an attractive woman of a certain age who can handle herself in a man’s world.
Infuse with greed. Serve ingredients in Florida or California for a light amuse-bouche, or in Detroit for something a little heavier.
Judging by his first novel, Peter Leonard has been studying the Old Man’s cookbook, but he hasn’t got the kitchen skills to serve up an equivalent to favourite Elmore Leonard concoctions like Get Shorty or Freaky Deaky.
That doesn’t mean Quiver won’t serve admirably as a cottage or airplane novel. It’s got the tension you look for in a page-turner and there are sections of clever Leonardian wordplay that present the perceptions of various characters on subjects as varied as nail salons and pimped-out cars.
There’s also the possibility that Peter is working toward a darker vision of the crime novel than Elmore has been writing in recent years.
The novel opens with 40ish Kate McCall mourning her wealthy, NASCAR-racing husband, killed by their teenage son Luke in a bowhunting accident. (Paging Dr. Freud?) Before long Kate attracts the attentions of a recently released ex-con named Jack and the much nastier crooks to whom he owes money.
A standard presence in Elmore’s novels in recent decades has been the charming rogue (Get Shorty’s Chili Palmer, for example) who isn’t really such a bad guy. Jack, too helpfully described as “a cross between George Clooney and Matt Dillon,” seems to be just such a character.
Except that in Quiver the charming rogue’s appeal really is only skin deep. It’s entirely possible that he’s a psychopath.
If Leonard had run with that idea ¬—puncturing the myth of the good-hearted crook—he might have made his debut novel stand out a bit more from his father’s oeuvre.
Unfortunately, Leonard falls back instead on stock characterization and quirkiness to keep the reader interested. This technique that reaches its nadir when DeJuan Green, the smarter-than-he-looks gangbanger with the most pimped-out car in the state, compares a character to “Talleyrand, Charles Maurice, motherf--- er, French diplomat, homie a Napoleon.” In the midst of an armed standoff, no less.
Even throwaway bits seem, well, throwaway. The Canadian-born manager of a Michigan bank pronounces “a lot of money” as “a loot of money.” A sheriff’s deputy who gets drawn into the plot is just a bit too stupid to be believed.
Though Quiver works as a quick crime read, Peter Leonard needs to develop as a writer and quit relying so heavily on his father’s distinctive style if he wants his work to be fully satisfying.
Bob Armstrong is a Winnipeg playwright and an Elmore Leonard fan since Glitz in 1985.
British Edition of Quiver - October 2, 2008
Quiver Book Event: Border’s Books, Birmingham, MI
On May 29, I had my second book signing event, this one in my hometown, Birmingham, Michigan.
Elmore and I did a Q&A and answered questions. We’re developing quite an act!
My friends and family came out to support me.
Before the bookstore event, Elmore and I go over our our notes for the Peter and Elmore Show.
French author, Laurent Chalumeau filmed the event as part of a documentary on Elmore for Canal Plus, a premium French TV channel. Earlier in the day Laurent filmed an interview with me on Elmore’s tennis court.
But this is what it’s all about: signing (and therefore selling) books! Thanks everybody! Oops. I’m out of exclamation points. Sorry, dad.
Quiver Review: Audio
Quiver
Posted by Amazon Customer Reviews
FINELY DRAWN CHARACTERS AND ESCALATING SUSPENSE, May 22, 2008
Some might say “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” is a tried and true expression. Most definitely true in the case of this debut novel by Peter Leonard, son of acclaimed thriller writer Elmore Leonard. While the elder Leonard is still practicing his lifelong diligence and turning out bestsellers at the age of 82, it took Leonard the younger quite a while to turn his hand to authorship. In fact, he spent the majority of his professional life to date in another field. Nonetheless when he did write a novel he has said that he found the experience both satisfying and exciting. Listeners will have the same feelings when they hear his tale as read by accomplished actor Scott Sowers.
In addition to his stage roles many will remember Sowers from his frequent TV appearances on Law & Order and All My Children. His crystal clear diction and persuasive delivery make listening a pleasure.
Quiver begins innocently enough but the author quickly ratchets up tension. Kate is shopping when her cart collides with one belonging to Owen, a race car driver. He asks her out and it’s fast forward into marriage.
Years pass and Owen takes their teenage son, Luke, hunting - with bow and arrow. The unthinkable happens when one of Luke’s arrows pierces a deer and goes straight into Owen’s chest. The death of his father spirals Luke into serious depression.
It’s not long before Jack, Kate’s old boyfriend, turns up. He’s been released from prison after serving over three years of a five year sentence for armed robbery. Along with Jack comes trouble. The stolen money has never been found and his pals want it. Owen left Kate with a good deal of money which is now also at risk.
Crisp dialogue, finely drawn characters, and escalating suspense make standout listening. We look forward to Peter Leonard’s next, and hope he doesn’t wait so long this time around.
- Gail Cooke
Quiver Review - Providence Journal-Bulletin
Providence Journal-Bulletin (Rhode Island)
BYLINE: By JON LAND, Special to the Journal
The ghosts in Quiver by Peter Leonard (St. Martin s, 275 pages, $24.95) aren t real, but they do an equally good job of haunting the characters lives. This debut effort by Peter Leonard, the son of Elmore, is fueled by the same raw staccato dialogue and desperately flawed characters that made his father the master of modern crime fiction.
Grieving widow Kate McCall has to deal somehow with the tragic accidental death of her husband at the hands of her son Luke. As if that weren t bad enough, her n er-do-well ex-boyfriend Jack Curran returns to her life with lar-ceny on his mind and a pair of brutal ex-partners on his tail. The spiraling plot leads ultimately to the woods of Northern Michigan where tragedy has al-ready struck once and seems poised to do so again.
Reading Leonard is just as much fun as reading, well, Leonard.
Quiver Review: Canadian Sun Newspapers
Calgary Sun (Alberta)
Edmonton Sun (Alberta)
Winnipeg Sun (Manitoba)
Ottawa Sun (Ontario)
The Toronto Sun (Ontario)
BYLINE: BY YVONNE CRITTENDEN
Proving the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, Peter Leonard, son of the master Elmore, has written a gripping first novel. The story starts with young Luke McCall accidentally shooting his father Owen dead with an arrow on a hunt-ing trip. His mother Kate, survivor of a near-fatal encounter with corrupt cops in Guatemala when she was a Peace Corps volunteer, is worried about her son’s consequent depression and acting out. When Luke runs off to the family cabin in the northern Michigan woods, Kate follows him, followed by an old friend and lover, Jack Carran, and this sets off a tragicomic series of events that again test her survival instincts. Leonard has his father’s knack for creating memora-ble characters who are both sinister and amusing. The result is a masterful de-but. (H. B. Fenn)
Quiver Review - Rocky Mountain News (Denver, CO)
Rocky Mountain News (Denver, CO)
Luke McCall has accidentally killed his father with an arrow during a hunting trip.
Without time to grieve or even console her son, Kate McCall is visited by an old lover, ostensibly to offer comfort and support.
But Jack Curran has a past that Kate is unaware of, and it’s going to mean many more deaths in the McCalls’ future.
Final word: Leonard is the son of the famous Elmore, and he has inherited his father’s plotting talents, if not the elder’s skill at dialogue.
But that’s quibbling. Leonard has written an accomplished nail-biter, a har-binger of even better stories to come.
- Peter Mergendahl
Quiver Book Event: Aunt Agatha’s Books, Ann Arbor
Last night I had my first bookstore appearance and signing for my first novel, Quiver. I brought along my dad, Elmore, who quizzed me about my book in front of a nice crowd. Thanks to Nicola Books in Ann Arbor for the pictures.
Quiver Review - Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, Florida)
Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, Florida)
Daily Press (Newport News, Virginia)
The Myrtle Beach Sun-News (South Carolina)
Orlando Sentinel (Florida)
Younger Leonard has upstanding debut
Is Peter Leonard’s debut “Quiver” in the same league as the work by his famous father, veteran author Elmore Leonard?
The quick answer: “Quiver” (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press, $24.95) is quite interesting, creating a spunky believable heroine with an unusual back-ground, realistic villains and a plot that could easily fit in the oeuvre of El-more Leonard. Is “Quiver” as good as a novel by the elder Leonard? Not quite, but then few novels are.
But “Quiver” stands on its own as a solid thriller. Peter Leonard’s energetic style makes one forget the name Elmore and concentrate on the Leonard.
Heroine Kate McCall’s grief over her much-loved husband’s death during a hunting accident is overshadowed by concern for her son, Luke, 16, who acciden-tally killed his father with a bow and arrow while deer hunting. Luke’s insur-mountable guilt makes him drink and skip school. Kate’s life becomes more cha-otic when an old boyfriend - a con man who’s been in prison - tracks her down, followed by a trio of criminals he double-crossed.
But these gangsters may be underestimating this “nice God-fearing suburban momma” whose strength makes her a poor choice of victim.
“Quiver” moves briskly as Leonard realistically ties together the seemingly far-flung characters. His heroine sturdily holds the plot together and his vil-lains are, well, Leonard-esque.
Peter Leonard shows that good writing may be in his genes, but the style’s all his own.
By Oline H. Cogdill, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Quiver Review -The Seattle Post-Intellencer
THE SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
This is an outstanding debut. It has it all - excellent characterization, plotting and dialog, all of which will immediately hook readers. My heart went out to the young son who accidentally kills his father, even as the plot takes a different, and suspenseful, turn. Great tension and sharp-as-a-tack writing!
- Susan Wasson of Bookworks, a New Mexico store with Book Sense
Quiver Review - The New York Sun- Otto Penzler
The New York Sun
Quivering With Excitement
BYLINE: OTTO PENZLER
Being related to the boss is often a good thing, and nepotism of all kinds has a long and even occasionally honorable tradition, from royal families to American unions. Your father is king, maybe you get to be king. Your father is head of Local 123, you get a job loading trucks or, on Broadway, you get to be one of the three guys paid to move a lamp.
When it’s a question of royalty, the general population doesn’t get to have a say in the matter very often; nor does an unrelated truck loader or lamp mover.
Everything changes in the arts. Kirk Douglas’s son might have moved to the front of a few lines, but if moviegoers didn’t like Michael Douglas, and if he wasn’t any good at his job, he’d be the third lead in summer stock in Vancouver. Norah Jones may have had a few doors opened by her father, Ravi Shankar, but if she couldn’t sing, play piano, or write some pretty good songs, she’d be working in the lounge of a Holiday Inn in Des Moines. Because her mother has been a worldwide mega-seller for three decades, that first novel by Carol Higgins Clark might have been read by a senior editor rather than a junior assistant, but if readers didn’t like her books, she’d be submitting occasional stories to online magazines instead of being an 11-time best-selling author.
To look at it from a slightly different perspective: How is that for feeling a little pressure? How is it for Peter Leonard, who happens to be the son of one of the greatest crime writers who ever lived, Elmore Leonard, now that he’s decided to try his hand at writing his own thriller?
You think having that DNA is a big helping hand? Even knowing that every critic and reader in the country is bound to compare your first book with the glowing memories they have of your dad’s best books?
Well, I’m here to tell you that it must be possible for talent to pass from one generation to the next, because “Quiver” (St. Martin’s Minotaur, 276 pages, $23.95) is a spectacular debut.
I like opening scenes like the one in “Quiver.” The female star, Kate, meets Owen, her future husband, a successful race-car driver, when they crash shopping carts in the supermarket; he asks her out, and they exchange stories with crisp dialogue that makes you want to spend the rest of the book with them. But that’s not what happens.
The story line takes us forward to when Owen takes their teenage son, Luke, bow-hunting. Owen is killed in a freak accident when Luke’s arrow goes straight through a deer and into his father’s chest, sending the boy into deep, sullen depression.
Meanwhile, Kate’s former boyfriend, Jack, has gotten out of prison after serving 38 months of a five-year term for armed robbery because he convinced his parole board that he had found God. Needing a place to stay, he visits his sis-ter, who, when she opens the door, asks if he escaped. No, he tells her, “I found Jesus.” Without hesitation, she says, “Yeah, right.”
Spending some quality time together, she tells him of her career as a “nail technologist” and the creativity it allows her to express, painting flowers and butterflies on fingernails with bright colors and rhinestones. Her dream is to open her own place and call it Ultimate Nails. “I think that says it all,” she says.
Jack thinks, “That’s what happens, you try to be nice to someone, they bore the hell out of you.” He decides it is impossible for him to go straight.
The money from Jack’s old robbery was never recovered, and his partners want their share. When they catch up with Jack, he explains that he hid it in a motel that was subsequently razed to become a strip mall. They don’t believe him.
Jack plans to con Kate, who was left wealthy when her husband died, out of some money, but his partners have bigger plans, which is when things get really dicey for her and her son.
With a large cast of characters - each presented as meticulously as an Andrew Wyeth portrait - and numerous points of view, all funneling inevitably to a stunning conclusion, you will be holding your breath until the final page.
Peter’s dad should be proud.
Mr. Penzler is the proprietor of the Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan and the series editor of the annual Best American Mystery Stories. He can be reached at
Peter Leonard Profile: The Detroit Free Press
Detroit Free Press Desiree Cooper column: Peter Leonard follows dad Elmore’s example with a gritty Michigan novel
BYLINE: Desiree Cooper, Detroit Free Press
May 13--At 82, acclaimed writer Elmore Leonard is still turning out best-selling crime fiction. In fact, the metro Detroiter begins a book tour this month.
But the new book, out today, isn’t written by Elmore. It’s the work of his 56-year-old son, Peter Leonard. Peter is the first of Elmore’s five children to follow him into novel writing. Perhaps the thing the father is most proud of is that he had almost nothing to do with it.
“I stayed back,” said Elmore. “He’s got to develop his own sound.”
Maybe his son is developing his own sound, but for Elmore Leonard fans, “Quiver’s” tune will be familiar. It’s in the same genre as the books Elmore has been writing since he gave up Westerns in the late 1960s. “Quiver” (Thomas Dunne Books, $24.95) is set in Michigan, and the dialogue is smart and quick—signatures of Elmore’s novels.
“I guess I could have picked something besides writing crime novels,” said Peter, an advertising executive and father of four. “But I wasn’t intimidated by the fact that my father has written 45-plus books. I’ve been interested in crime and criminals for years. This is about what I wanted to do.”
I visited Peter at his Birmingham colonial last week. Elmore walked over from his home, four blocks away. He had been with us more than an hour before he no-ticed a final copy of “Quiver” in Peter’s earth-toned den. Although Elmore had read a draft of Peter’s manuscript, he hadn’t seen the published book—until then.
Opening the sleek, black cover, he flipped to the last page. “It’s 276 pages—good length,” he said, weighing the book the same way a parent weighs a new-born.
Turning to the dedication page, he read, “For Elmore.”
“That’s nice,” the veteran author said with quiet pride.
“Quiver” has been favorably received by critics. But, judging from Peter’s smile, Elmore was the only critic he needed to please.
When in Rome
The unassuming Elmore Leonard still tools around in his 1995 Volkswagen Cabriolet. Peter is a tennis player with an outgoing personality. The second of five children, he’s taller and stockier than his father. Growing up, Peter had an edge that surprised Elmore.
“He had a dummy that he would beat up,” Elmore said. “It was named after the guy who lived next door. Peter didn’t get into trouble, but he didn’t back away from fights. I didn’t operate that way. I haven’t been in a fight since sixth grade.”
As a teenager, Peter started calling his father by his first name. Maybe it was because his dad was so easy-going. Or maybe it was because Peter was eager to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with him.
“He didn’t object to me calling him Elmore,” said Peter, “so it stuck.”
Looking back on his childhood, Peter is most impressed by the sense of nor-malcy the family had, despite the fact that his father’s best-selling novels were being made into Hollywood movies.
“The phone would ring on a Saturday while we were watching football,” said Peter. “It would be someone like Clint Eastwood or Paul Newman. And Elmore would say, ‘Hang on, I want to watch the end of this play.’ He didn’t let it go to his head.”
Born in Lathrup Village and raised in Birmingham, Peter graduated from Brother Rice High School in 1969. He went to Eastern Michigan University to study English, although he had toyed briefly with becoming a chef.
In his senior year, he studied at Loyola University in Italy. One day, he and a drinking buddy found a taxi parked in a piazza in Trastevere in the old quar-ter of Rome. Peter climbed into the back seat, while his friend got behind the wheel and started driving. The boys were eventually apprehended by cops and thrown in a maximum security Italian prison.
“My mother was quite upset but my father took it in stride,” said Peter. “He had been inventing bad characters for so long, I think he was amused. He figured spending a week in jail was good for me.”
“All I did was get him a lawyer,” Elmore said drolly.
After Peter was released, his dad sent him a note. It said: “Hard time makes the boy the man.”
Finding their way
Peter remembers his father as “the cool dad,” who was well-liked by his teen-age friends. But Elmore said his affability wasn’t second nature—it was buoyed by a serious drinking problem.
“My wife and I drank a lot socially,” said Elmore, referring to Peter’s mother, Beverly Cline. The couple divorced in the late 1970s after nearly 30 years of marriage. “Finally, it got too much for me. You know you have a problem when you have a full drink in your hand and all you can think about is your next drink.”
Elmore joined Alcoholics Anonymous in 1974, but said it wasn’t until 1977 that he truly committed to recovery.
“Once I quit, everything opened up,” he said. “Once you have a program of re-covery, you realize you don’t need alcohol to be funny.”
While his father was coming to terms with his alcoholism, Peter was trying to find his way, too. At the end of his senior year in college, Peter sent his fa-ther his first short story. Elmore sent back a three-page critique saying that the characters were like “strips of leather drying in the sun.”
“It hurt and made me mad,” Peter said. “But it made me realize that I didn’t really want to write. Part of writing is maturity, point of view and experience. I didn’t have that yet.”
Peter didn’t try writing fiction again for 30 years.
Time is right
Instead, Peter followed his father’s footsteps into advertising. Early in his career, Elmore had worked at the advertising firm of Campbell-Ewald.
“I was getting up at 5 a.m. to write fiction before work,” said Elmore, who wrote Chevrolet ads for about seven years. “I wasn’t happy in advertising.”
Peter was happier. In 1980, he started his own advertising firm, Leonard, Mayer & Tocco Inc. in Birmingham. Four years ago, he began writing “Quiver” af-ter an unfulfilling foray into writing screenplays.
Despite “Quiver” springing entirely from Peter’s imagination, I thought it read remarkably like an Elmore Leonard novel. It’s one of those fast reads where the characters are both visual and real. The heroine of “Quiver” is recently widowed Kate McCall. Her husband was killed by their teenage son, Luke, in a tragic bow-hunting accident near Traverse City. Mother and son struggle with grief and guilt until Kate’s old flame, Jack, shows up. A smooth talker and ex-con, Jack entangles them with unsavory characters who have mother and son facing deadly consequences once again
.
Instead of sharing the novel with his father, Peter held it close until he was done.
“I didn’t read it until he gave me the whole manuscript,” said Elmore. “I thought it was good. But I told him to change the spelling of a character from Dewan to DeJuan because I had seen it spelled that way more. And I told him to take all of the back story out of the first chapter and move it to Chapter Two and later chapters. I thought it would work better.”
This time, Peter wasn’t angered by his father’s critique, but buoyed by it. Now more mature, sure of his own voice and seasoned by life, he is ready to do something he couldn’t do at 21—embrace a career as a writer.
Even as “Quiver” hits the market, he’s editing his second novel and working on a third that begins with a familiar scene: The lead character finds himself in an Italian prison.
Collaboration unlikely
Peter hasn’t abandoned his advertising career, but he looks forward to spend-ing more time writing and promoting “Quiver” with the support of his famous fa-ther. I asked them whether they had plans to write a book together.
“I can’t imagine collaborating with someone on a book,” said Peter. “It’s so personal.”
“I don’t know how that would work,” said Elmore. But just to show who’s still boss, he added. “I can be like James Patterson and you can be the guy whose name is printed on the cover much smaller.”
Quiver Review: The Seattle Times
The Seattle Times
BYLINE: Adam Woog, Special to The Seattle Times
Peter Leonard’s “Quiver” (St. Martin’s Minotaur, 276 pp., $23.95), a strong debut that combines a tight plot (about a deadly double-cross in the woods of Michigan) with memorable characters and dialogue come to think of it, not unlike what Leonard’s father, Elmore Leonard, creates.
Quiver - E-Card
Peter here. I’m counting down the days until my book’s release. I’m going to have a big May with interviews, book signings, even an interview with French TV. Stay tuned.
Below is the e-card I’m sending out.
Quiver Review: The Library Journal
Library Journal Reviews
BYLINE: Craig Shufelt
In his debut novel, Leonard (son of crime fiction master Elmore) shows more than a little promise. Katie McCall is a still-grieving widow whose past comes back to hurt her in a bizarre manner. Shortly after her husband is killed by their son in a bow-hunting accident, an ex-boyfriend and a group of thugs show up and set in motion events that will lead to a life-or-death climax. It’s im-possible not to compare Leonard with his famous father, and there are some simi-larities. The story is tight, and the descriptions of the Michigan setting ring true, whether it’s the Detroit area or further upstate. The pacing is excellent, and the characters all have unique voices. What prevents the book from being outstanding is the stilted dialog, which too often sounds like a written report rather than a conversation you’d expect people to have. Still, this is an excel-lent debut, and one that many will likely finish in one sitting. Leonard is an author to watch, and this title is recommended for all public libraries.
