52 Pickup

Harry Mitchell is a Detroit businessman who has been happily married for twenty-two years. In all that time he has strayed only once, but a blackmailer has captured the affair on film. The extortionist demands one hundred thousand dollars to keep the footage private, and warns that if Harry refuses, the criminals are prepared to escalate, even to murder.

The blackmailers have badly misjudged their target. Harry is not the kind of man who submits to threats, and he responds by striking back against the people trying to ruin him. The novel is a tense cat-and-mouse story in which the victim becomes the hunter.

First published in 1974, 52 Pickup is one of Elmore Leonard's crime novels, a writer known for lean prose and morally complicated characters. It was adapted into a 1986 film directed by John Frankenheimer and starring Roy Scheider.