SOURCE: "Plumbing the Shallows," in Commonweal, August 18, 1995, pp. 24-5.

The following is Worth's positive review of Riding the Rap.

Elmore Leonard has been writing great crime fiction for years with the same cozy formulas, the same cast of South Florida rednecks and drug-runners and gamblers and cops and abused ex-wives. So it has been a little strange to see his profile rise abruptly in the past year, with highbrow critical praise, a big Hollywood film, even an appearance in the New Yorker. One has to wonder sometimes whether all this attention is going to his head, making him too self-conscious. It has happened before: Dashiell Hammett never wrote a good line after Hollywood discovered him. But these fears are groundless. Riding the Rap is as good as anything Leonard has ever written.

As much as any contemporary fiction writer, Elmore Leonard has discovered a style of his own...