SOURCE: "The Convention of Crime and the Reading of Signs in Elmore Leonard's Glitz," in Clues, Vol. 11, No. 1, Spring-Summer, 1990, pp. 85-93.

In the following essay, Baldwin illustrates Leonard's use of symbols and unique approach to conventions of crime fiction and societal norms in Glitz.

In the beginning of Glitz, one of Elmore Leonard's finest crime novels, Vincent Mora, a Miami Beach cop, is shot by a mugger he subsequently kills. In the end, Vincent is shot by Teddy Magyck, a psychopathic rapist and murderer whom Vincent had arrested and sent to prison seven years before. Teddy, having sworn revenge, stalks Vincent throughout the book, only to fail thanks to Vincent's girl friend, Linda Moon. Linda shoots Teddy before he can finish Vincent off. Vincent lives, Teddy dies.

Within this frame Leonard represents an underworld in search of itself, a Great Wrong Place (as W. H. Auden said of...