Sad news this morning: Elmore Leonard, the writer behind works like Get Shorty, Justified and 3:10 to Yuma, has passed away due to complications from a stroke. While Leonard never achieved the household name recognition of, say, Cormac McCarthy or Barbara Kingsolver, he was quietly one of his generation’s most influential authors. In fact, The Rachel Papers author Martin Amis compared him to Charles Dickens, saying “Elmore Leonard is the nearest America has to a national writer. Just the depth and mass of his appeal …everyone has their taste united when it comes to Mr. Leonard” …