Elmore Leonard’s South Florida: Three Novels and Two Films

Elmore Leonard spent two decades writing westerns and most of the 1970s writing Detroit crime novels before Florida got into his books. In 1969 he bought his mother a small motel in Pompano Beach, and his visits there led to Gold Coast in 1980 and a run of South Florida novels after it. Three of them are below, and two became films you have probably seen without knowing whose book they came from.

LaBrava, 1983

Set in a South Beach that had not yet been rediscovered, back when the art deco district was cheap and half empty. It won the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award for Best Novel in 1984.

Rum Punch, 1992

Palm Beach County, a flight attendant, and a scheme involving money that will not stay where anyone puts it. Quentin Tarantino adapted it in 1997 as Jackie Brown, moving the setting to California but keeping Leonard’s rhythm almost intact.

Out of Sight, 1996

Steven Soderbergh filmed it in 1998. The novel moves between Florida and Detroit and is built almost entirely out of conversation, which is the whole trick of a Leonard book. Nothing is explained. People talk, and you work out what is happening from how they say it.

Where to Start

Start with LaBrava, because the Miami Beach in it no longer exists anywhere except in that novel.