Hmm …

… About Last Night | A new face in the canon. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

 I can’t count the number of Mr. Leonard’s novels that revolve around a divorced man of a certain age who falls hard for a wised-up younger woman. On the other hand, a cheeseburger is a cheeseburger. No matter how many you’ve eaten, you can usually make room for another one if it’s good, and Mr. Leonard wrote a lot of good books, “LaBrava,” “Maximum Bob” and “Tishomingo Blues” in particular.

But one can take pleasure in any number of sonnets, even though they're all about thwarted love. Leonard, it seems to me, came up with a narrative technique largely derived from a momentum born of tempo. And his characters are quite well individuated. The bail bondsman in Rum Punch, for instance. On the other hand, I definitely second this:

I’d much rather see the LOA take note of such underappreciated American novelists as (say) James Gould Cozzens, Peter DeVries, or John P. Marquand—and perhaps they will someday.