City Primeval by Elmore Leonard
"City Primeval" by Elmore Leonard is celebrated as a significant work in the author's oeuvre, marking a transition from his earlier Westerns to contemporary crime narratives set in urban environments. The story revolves around Detroit homicide detective Raymond Cruz, who embodies traits reminiscent of classic Western heroes, being a Texan of Mexican descent. The novel draws parallels to the iconic Western film "High Noon," framing the conflict between Cruz and the antagonist, Clement Mansell, within a classic showdown narrative.
Set against the backdrop of Detroit, Leonard integrates realistic elements from his research into police procedures, particularly showcasing interrogation techniques that reveal the nuanced dynamics of law enforcement. Throughout the novel, Leonard blurs the lines between good and evil, illustrating how characters operate on a moral spectrum rather than a strict dichotomy. Mansell, the villain, navigates the legal system to evade justice, while Cruz finds himself bending the law to achieve his ends, culminating in a morally ambiguous confrontation.
The duality of the characters is emphasized, as Cruz and Mansell recognize their similarities despite being on opposing sides. This exploration of complex moral landscapes and character motivations invites readers to engage with the narrative on a deeper level, offering insights into both the law enforcement world and the mind of an amoral antagonist, characteristic of Leonard's storytelling.
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City Primeval by Elmore Leonard
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1980
Type of work: Novel
The Work
City Primeval is widely regarded as the first book of Leonard’s strongest period. As the allusion to the classic 1952 Western film High Noon in the subtitle suggests, the novel marks a conscious adaptation of the characters and themes of Leonard’s earlier Westerns to the modern urban settings of his later crime novels. The book’s protagonist, Detroit homicide detective Raymond Cruz, is a Texan of Mexican descent who thus has the background appropriate to a Western hero. Leonard describes Cruz’s relationship with Clement Mansell, the book’s villain, in terms of classic Westerns: “No—more like High Noon. Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. You have to go back a hundred years and out west to find an analogy. But there it is.” References to Westerns are scattered throughout the book, which opens with a dinner conversation between Cruz and a reporter who accuses him of trying to emulate Wyatt Earp, Clint Eastwood, and John Wayne. It closes, appropriately, with an old-fashioned showdown between Cruz and Mansell.
This frontier imagery is integrated into a thoroughly realistic context that reveals Leonard’s recent in-depth study of the daily operations of the Detroit police department. Particularly well-handled are a series of interrogation scenes in which the detectives use subtle techniques of misdirection to gain information from uncooperative suspects, who never realize how much they have given away. As in most of Leonard’s novels, the difference between the good and bad characters is not strictly a matter of following or breaking the law; the players on both sides operate very near the border between right and wrong, with their ends differing much more than the means used to achieve them.
Mansell has, in fact, found the legal system to be in some ways his best ally; he has been freed from earlier murder charges on legal technicalities. Cruz, on the other hand, is forced to work outside the law, tampering with evidence and eventually forcing a confrontation in which he kills Mansell under circumstances that are ethically, and perhaps legally, suspect. As Mansell says to Cruz in the final scene, “Me and you are on different sides, but we’re alike in a lot of ways,” an observation that typifies the similarity, and even sympathy, that usually exists between antagonist and protagonist in Leonard’s work. Mansell’s point of view is relied on just as much as that of Cruz or of Sandy Stanton, Mansell’s girlfriend, and the reader consequently acquires a degree of familiarity with and understanding of a totally amoral character that is unusual in popular fiction.
Bibliography
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