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Elmore Leonard (Photo copyright cnn.com)

The work.

Elmore Leonard was the coolest cat working.

His novels were tight, streamlined, snappy works of art that smacked you across the face, then stroked your chin and told you, “It’s OK baby, you know I love you.”

But you were never really sure.

“I want us to be friends, Faye. And we all know that friends don’t hit each other… unless they have to.”

“Rough business, this movie business. I’m gonna have to go back to loan-sharking just to take a rest.”

Mixing dark humor with bracing violence, Leonard, who passed away Tuesday at 87, made an indelible mark on every would-be writer, film fan and book lover.

From “Get Shorty” to “Maximum Bob” to the vastly underrated “Hombre,” many of his books were turned into films and TV shows and the best ones (like “Jackie Brown,” which came from “Rum Punch” or “Out of Sight”) played true to his perfectly-played dialogue.

Dennis Lehane, the author of “Mystic River” and “Gone Baby Gone” and maybe the best crime novelist out there right now, had this to say about Leonard on his Facebook page this morning:

Elmore Leonard has left us, which sucks. One of the biggest influences on my own work, if not the biggest. He was one of our most underrated satirists and social commentators and the most influential, game-changing crime novelist of the last several decades.

When it came to writing dialogue, he sat on the mountaintop while the the rest of us wandered in the valley. He’s truly irreplaceable, and the world is poorer for his leaving it. RIP, Dutch.

You were The Man, Mr. Leonard. May your work live forever.