How I met the late, great crime novelist Elmore Leonard 'The coolest guy': Why crime novelist Elmore Leonard should’ve won a Nobel Prize “I have an affection for all of my characters, even the bad guys, because they’re so dumb,” I recall the late, great crime novelist Elmore Leonard telling the audience at the Free Library in Philadelphia on May 14, 2009. Sadly, one of the things the COVID-19 pandemic has stopped is the author events at the Parkway Central Library in Philadelphia. Acclaimed national authors, like Leonard, used to come to Philadelphia and speak about their work and themselves. Leonard, the author of “Get Shorty,” “Raylan,” “Out of Sight,” and other classic crime novels, was a hugely popular writer then, as well as now.