The compleat master …

… The Elmore Leonard Story by Joan Acocella | The New York Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Asked, once, how he was able to tap into actual speech rhythms, Leonard answered, “I just listen.” (He also tipped his hat to a few novelists he regarded as masters of dialogue, above all George V. Higgins, the author of The Friends of Eddie Coyle.) In the words he gives his characters, he often dispenses with verb-tense niceties and above all with subordinate conjunctions and the conditional and subjunctive verb forms that go with them. (“You didn’t kill him somebody else would have to.”)