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  ELMORE LEONARD

  CAT CHASER

  A New York Times notable book of the year

  “One of the season’s best escapes . . .Leonard’s prose and his hero keep as cool as a mug of beer under the trees.”

  Washington Post Book World

  “Explosive . . .Elmore Leonard [has] a strong style and infallible ear. . . . Cat Chaser demonstrates the quality that has given him such a wide following. . . . It really moves.”

  New York Times Book Review

  “The reigning master of hard-action crime fiction . . .Few fiction writers match the artful ability of Elmore Leonard, first to persuade you to read his next sentence, then to draw you into reading his next chapter, and finally to seduce you into reading his entire book.”

  Cincinnati Enquirer

  “The coolest, hottest writer in America.”

  Chicago Tribune

  “I love Elmore Leonard. . . . He executes to near perfection every time.”

  San Jose Mercury News

  “Cat Chaser is just what one would expect from Elmore Leonard—quirky, peopled with oddball characters . . .and more twists and turns than a roller coaster.”

  Cleveland Plain Dealer

  “Mr. Leonard is incapable of cheating the reader. . . . He is better at dialogue than anybody else on the block. . . . He also manages to put the fun back in adultery and . . .he has created a character—the loser we love too much for our own good—just as compelling as the one Raymond Chandler devised for The Long Goodbye.”

  New York Times

  “The debate over who’s the all-time king of the whack job crime novelists just ended. Living or dead, Elmore Leonard tops ’em all.”

  Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

  “Elmore Leonard is the Alexander the Great of crime fiction.”

  Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

  “A first-rate novelist . . .Elmore Leonard is so good.”

  “No one writes better dialogue. No one conveys society’s seedier or marginal characters more convincingly. . . . Leonard’s sardonic view of the world proves immensely entertaining, and not a little thought-provoking.”

  Detroit Free Press

  “Leonard hits the mark again. . . . Leonard would be great just for his characters. But throw in snappy dialogue, twisted plots, and over-the-top atmosphere and you’ll find yourself in the hands of a master.”

  Albany Times-Union

  “Nobody but nobody in the business does it better.”

  New York Daily News

  “Elmore ‘Dutch’ Leonard is more than just one of the all-time greats of crime fiction. He’s fast becoming an authentic American icon.”

  Seattle Times

  “The Godfather of the American crime novel.”

  Tulsa World

  “Vintage Leonard . . .exceptional dialogue . . .For sheer entertainment of the hard-boiled criminal variety, it’s hard to beat Elmore Leonard.”

  Christian Science Monitor

  “Leonard is the best in the business: His dialogue snaps, his characters are more alive than most of the people you meet on the street, and his twisting plots always resolve themselves with a no-nonsense plausibility.”

  Newsday

  “Elmore Leonard follows a complex and demanding formula. It is called good writing.”

  Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

  “Vintage Elmore Leonard—you’ll never guess the ending.”

  San Francisco Chronicle

  “Leonard has become a phenomenon. . . . His crime novels [are] grippingly true-to-life tales of double-cross and redemption, with a murky morality that seems to suit the times. . . . Leonard truly shines. He has created a gallery of compelling, off-the-wall villains unequaled in American crime fiction.”

  New York Times Magazine

  “Elmore Leonard, already the best suspense writer in America, gets better with every book.”

  Miami Herald

  “In the kitchen of crime fiction, Elmore Leonard is the pastry chef par excellence.”

  Detroit News

  “Elmore Leonard is an awfully good writer of the sneaky sort; he’s so good, you don’t notice what he’s up to.”

  Donald E. Westlake

  “He turns out first-rate thrillers . . .crime books that sketch the dark side of the dollar, a world where street-crazies plot, scams rise and fall . . .Leonard has simply set loose the most frightening psychopaths in the pages of literature. . . . By any standard, ‘Dutch’ Leonard is a rare find.”

  Bergen Record

  “America’s finest, funniest low-life novelist . . .gives his readers everything they would expect: a sense of place and milieu, lively characters, drop-dead dirty talk, situations you can’t describe in a family newspaper . . .and poetic justice flecked by the unfairness of life.”

  Boston Globe

  “Elmore Leonard is the master of the oddball. His stories are quirky and his characters are definitely not the people who live next door (unless you live in a very strange neighborhood). . . . His prose is heaven-sent.”

  Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

  “The best writer of crime fiction alive.”

  Newsweek

  Books by Elmore Leonard

  The Bounty Hunters

  The Law at Randado

  Escape from Five Shadows

  Last Stand at Saber River

  Hombre

  The Big Bounce

  The Moonshine War

  Valdez Is Coming

  Forty Lashes Less One

  Mr. Majestyk

  52 Pickup

  Swag

  Unknown Man #89

  The Hunted

  The Switch

  Gunsights

  Gold Coast

  City Primeval

  Split Images

  Cat Chaster

  Stick

  LaBrava

  Glitz

  Bandits

  Touch

  Freaky Deaky

  Killshot

  Get Shorty

  Maximum Bob

  Rum Punch

  Pronto

  Riding the Rap

  Out of Sight

  Cuba Libre

  The Tonto Woman and Other Western Stories

  Be Cool

  Pagan Babies

  Tishomingo Blues

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  CAT CHASER. Copyright © 1982 by Elmore Leonard. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  EPub Edition © JANUARY 2003 ISBN: 9780061828751

  Version 07062012

  First HarperTorch paperback printing: February 2003

  First William Morrow trade paperback printing: November 1998

  First William Morrow hardcover printing: June 1982

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