Picket Line and Other Stories

Three previously unpublished stories by the master of tense set-ups

These three stories–‘Picket Line’, ‘Chick Killer’ and ‘Ice Man’–show Elmore Leonard at his most terse and harsh, able to conjure up a sense of profound unease and injustice in just a few words.

The main story ‘Picket Line’ describes a tense stand-off between migrant workers in Texas, police and labour organisers in a brilliantly orchestrated series of arguments and negotiations, with the potential for terrible violence lurking in every exchange. ‘Chick Killer’ and ‘Ice Man’, set in Florida and California are two riffs on the thing that made Leonard great: his extraordinary ear for creating dialogues of negotiation, where the stakes could not be higher for the loser.