City Primeval: High Noon Detroit

The in Elmore Leonard’s relentlessly gripping classic noir is Detroit, the author’s much-maligned hometown and the setting for many of the Grand Master’s acclaimed crime novels. The “Alexander the Great of crime fiction” ( ) shines in these urban mean streets, setting up a downtown showdown between the psychopathic, thrill-killing “Oklahoma Wildman” and the dedicated city cop who’s determined to take him down. The creator of U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens of TV’s fame, Elmore Leonard is the equal of any writer who has ever captivated readers with dark tales of heists, hijacks, double-crosses, and murder—John D. MacDonald, Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, and Robert Parker included—and nobody then or now is better.