I didn't know it was possible to be as good as Elmore Leonard. As a devout—or, more truthfully, addicted—reader of British whodunits, I had sampled hard-boiled crime novels when my source of supply had temporarily dried up and I needed something to steady my nerves, see me through a plane ride or a sleepless night. Since I've only now dipped into Elmore Leonard, I must admit, as a mystery buff, to having been half literate.

When I stepped over the border from Christie-Sayers country into Leonard territory, as it is depicted in Rum Punch, I was disoriented at first. The subtropical scenery, mostly exteriors, was colorful. The lighting was bright, so different from the muted backgrounds, mostly interiors, of English writers, or from the chiaroscuro of Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald, whose characters also inhabit a hot climate. The glare of the south Florida sun had a demoralizing effect, shining down on the lawful and the lawless alike, obliterating the class differences that are basic to the harmonious, structured society of the British detective story.

The formal detective novel, called the "thriller of manners" by the critic George Grella, is an elitist enterprise, dedicated to preserving both the moral and the social order. We as readers identify with the detective hero in his search for a solution that will repair the crack created by the crime. "We" are good and "they"—the perpetrators—are bad. As soon as the killer is caught, our anxieties are appeased. We are no longer threatened by him or in danger of becoming like him.

In Rum Punch, of course, Elmore Leonard stands this classic dichotomy on its head. We good people are in danger because he refuses to keep us insulated from the criminal element. He gives the bad guys too wide a range of interesting traits and recognizable passions.

Ordell Robbie, the light-skinned black gun dealer who propels the plot, is an ex-convict making it big for the first time. He is also flashy, funny, intuitive, resilient and likable, entertaining company unless he sees you as an obstacle to his plans. Louis Gara, a dark-skinned white man, plays a kind of pitiable Sancho Panza, cowed by the prison system, his reflexes slower than they used to be, putty in Ordell's hands. Elmore Leonard seats us right up close, putting us on the stage while the actors are performing, so we are forced to respond to his villains fully, with a confusing mixture of attraction and repulsion, instead of remaining safely separate from them.

In the world of traditional detective fiction, notions of right and wrong square with what we learned in church (with a margin for psychopathology, as in P.D. James and Elizabeth Daly). In Mr. Leonard's book, morality is situational, choice permeated by circumstance—as ambiguous as Ordell's and Louis's racial identities are at first glance. The forces of virtue are less than compelling. Representing the good guys are two cops, Faron Tyler and Ray Nicolet, overambitious, one step south of corruption; and a burned-out bail bondsman in his 50's, Max Cherry, who meets Ordell when he bails out one of the gun dealer's enforcers.

Max has carried indecision to the limit. The insurance company that backs his business has been taken over by mob interests. He knows he should pull out, but shilly-shallies. Separated from his wife of 27 years, he keeps putting off divorce. All he has left by way of integrity is his eroding professionalism. Ordell sums up Max's situation, tells him he's "dealing with scum … and trying to act respectable." Max is roused out of his lethargy by Jackie Burke, a still-attractive veteran flight attendant, who has been carrying Ordell's payoff money from the Bahamas. If he joins in her scheme to keep the money for themselves, he will have displayed some courage, at least by his own lights, for the first time in years.

Outpacing the classic hard-boiled novel, leaving the British detective novel in the dust, Elmore Leonard has compressed Rum Punch into almost pure drama, as close to playwriting as novel writing can get (and get away with). Mr. Leonard never tells you; he shows you. The story is all action, a scam within a scam: Ordell outfoxing Jackie and the cops; Jackie and Max duping the cops and Ordell.

His style is the absence of style, stripped of fancy baggage (social philosophy, abnormal psychology, beautiful diction)—the absence, as far as it's possible, of an authorial ego. He puts his ego in the service of his characters and their stories, and by doing so strikes a blow for that most radical of notions: that no one human being is better than any other, that there is no "other."

Being a new reader of Elmore Leonard, I believe I have a distinct advantage over his longtime fans. I have 29 more novels to look forward to. They have only Rum Punch.