The reasons are both obvious and obscure. What makes his other books so good is their organic quality, an ability to grow story out of basic elements. He never plots ahead of the game, allowing the characters to take over and dictate where they're going, what they're saying, who they're doing. Out Of Sight reads too much like its author had it all in mind before he ever touched a typewriter.

Doubly disappointing, in a way, because Leonard elects to leave Florida and return to his native Detroit, swapping all that sun, the loud shirts, for the cold cold city that made his name.

Bank-robber Jack Foley is doing thirty-to-life in a South Floridan gaol when the local Latinos mole a tunnel out beyond the border fence. Jack schemes to take advantage without he has to do any of the work, and runs slam-bang into tough deputy Federal Marshal Karen Sisco in the car-park outside. He kidnaps her.

Sharing the trunk of a car, she and Jack get closer than either might have anticipated, and against the odds both find themselves later mentally replaying their time together. When he fetches up in Detroit - in on the heist of the season - it's only a matter of time before their paths cross one last time.

Out Of Sight doesn't work because the characters are never properly fleshed-out. Leonard is one of America's best comic novelists, stuffing pages with wonderful three dimensional characters that talk the talk and fair walk off the walk right off of the page. Not so here - aside from Karen they feel die-cut from past glories, their dialogue flightless. And while it might seem over-cruel to say, perhaps we should look to renowned Leonard-fan Quentin Tarantino to accept some of the blame.

Querentino owns some screen-rights to the man's books, acknowledging the debt his own style owes the likes of Killshot and Freaky Deaky. Too much of Out Of Sight reads like cross-pollination, pop-culture references standing proud of the page time and again. The discussion of movies sits uneasily in the text, Leonard even having his people go see Pulp Fiction. We have long since learnt to expect better of the man than to replace characterisation with sloppy affectation. It's a screen trick that's lumpen on the page.

Which, maybe surprisingly, doesn't mean that this is a bad novel - Leonard is in all likelihood incapable. But nor is it any better than recent, sassy attempts at Elmore Country by the likes of Doug J. Swanson or Laurence Shames, and that's the problem. Out Of Sight is, of course, still very much worth reading, still retains the sureness of grip, the dynamics of Elmore Leonard, but it never quite sparks. On this occasion he's let his tinder get just a little damp.