Three-Ten to Yuma by Elmore Leonard.

The writer Elmore Leonard was masterful in creating easy-going crime fiction, and that approach made him unique. Aside from that, no matter what his books are about, but he always delivered strong characters and dialogs. When I want to watch a film and see his name in screenwriters, it already promises high quality. The short story Three-Ten to Yuma was lettered by him in his beginning when he sent his works to pulp periodical. It was published in Dime Western Magazine in March 1953.

It’s a story about a marshal who is transporting an arrested man to a train. Leonard’s prose already demonstrates that he was always stand-out in that. It impresses and makes to experience the places and the feelings of characters through its depiction, and the author astonishes that metaphors can be so. I was personally amazed by the characterization of the train. A wonderful fact, the editor asked the author to add that part; Leonard said it was the only time ever he was asked for revision. It was at period he was paid two cents per word.

The only shortcoming is how a confrontation between two lead characters is presented; that becomes understandable in the next paragraph after it ends.

Three-Ten to Yuma is a gripping and intricate story that includes solid dialogs which can cause a smile in some moments.

In the 1957, Leonard makes a breakthrough into cinema screens with adaptations of The Captives (it was released as The Tall T) and Three-Ten to Yuma in which the plot is reasonably extended and it has some changes that alter the personalities of heroes, but they contribute to turning out the flick into incredible in its own approach.