Leonard was born in New Orleans, LA and settled eventually in Detroit, MI (a setting for many of his novels). He graduated from the University of Detroit in 1950 and spent the 1950s and 1960s writing pulp western stories and novels. (Two of those stories—The Tall T and 3:10 to Yuma and one of those novels—Hombre—were adapted into movies.) Taking the advice of his agent, Harold "H.N." Swanson (1899-1991), to "forget the cowboy stuff and write stories with women in them," Leonard shifted to crime fiction. Novels like Mr. Majestyk (1974), 52 Pick-Up (1974), Swag (1976), The Hunted (1977), City Primeval (1980), Stick (1983), LaBrava (Edgar Award winner for Best Novel, 1984), Bandits (1987), and Freaky Deaky (1988) trace the evolution of Leonard's style from hard-boiled mystery-suspense to a seriocomic prose distinctively his own. Many of these works also were adapted to the screen, sometimes by Leonard himself (who was frequently dismayed by the results). Not turning his back completely on the Western genre, he also wrote during this period the screenplay for Joe Kidd (1972), starring Clint Eastwood, and contributed uncredited work for Posse (1975), starring and directed by Kirk Douglas.