Brett R. Smith mentioned this guy in a video a while back. There was a big buzz about him in the late 90s, I guess. This was the Tarantino era, as Jackie Brown is based on one of his books. There was one film I never saw called Out of Sight with George Cloony and Jennifer Lopez, which seems like a strong cast. His niche was crime fiction, so it was always about the criminal. It is said he just preferred street stuff, which was strong characters and realistic dialogue. Down and dirty street slang was his thing. I tried to get into this writer at one point, but I did not like the glorification of the scumbag. His forte’ was dialogue. I like that they called him “the Dickens of Detroit.” That is cool.
Yeah, I tried and failed to get into this writer just because the criminal stuff wore me down. That was the thing in Hollywood that eventually drove me away was that for too long, all the characters were ham-acting gangsters with no integrity. Real untrustworthy types. One book he wrote was called Freaky Deaky and I do not remember finishing it. The allure was always that his characters would be high on drugs and yet, highly functional.
Thanks for this topic though. One day, I’d like to plow through all of his books. Looks like he wrote a lot of westerns.
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