Out of Sight was published by Delacorte Press in 1996 and is widely considered Leonard’s most perfectly constructed novel. Jack Foley, a career bank robber who is charming, intelligent, and non-violent, escapes from a Florida prison and ends up locked in the trunk of a car with Karen Sisco, a U.S. Marshal. In the enforced intimacy of the trunk, they discover they are attracted to each other. The rest of the novel follows their separate paths — Jack to Detroit for one last score, Karen in pursuit — toward a collision that is inevitable, romantic, and ultimately tragic.
Leonard’s achievement is making the reader root simultaneously for the criminal and the cop. Jack is not a good man — he is a bank robber — but he is appealing, self-aware, and fundamentally decent in a way that the other criminals in the novel are not. Karen is not a simple enforcer — she is attracted to Jack precisely because he is interesting in a way that law-abiding men are not.
The Trunk Scene
The trunk scene — Jack and Karen locked together in the dark, talking — is among the most celebrated sequences in crime fiction. In a few pages of dialogue, Leonard establishes a complete romantic relationship: attraction, recognition, the mutual understanding that this will end badly, and the decision to proceed anyway. The scene was reproduced almost verbatim in the film, and Soderbergh credited it as the reason he took the project.
The Soderbergh Film
Steven Soderbergh’s 1998 film adaptation is widely considered the finest Leonard adaptation and one of the best crime films of the 1990s. George Clooney played Jack Foley with effortless cool; Jennifer Lopez, in what many consider her best dramatic performance, played Karen Sisco. The non-linear editing, the freeze-frame transitions, and the Detroit snow sequences gave the film a style that matched Leonard’s literary voice.
The film was not a major commercial success on release but has become a cult classic. It established the template for smart, dialogue-driven crime films in the 2000s and directly influenced the Ocean’s franchise (Soderbergh cast Clooney in Ocean’s Eleven partly on the basis of his work here).
Critical Reception
The novel received the strongest reviews of Leonard’s career. Many critics considered it his masterpiece — the book where his gifts for dialogue, character, and moral complexity reached their fullest expression. Martin Amis, in a famous essay, called Leonard “a literary genius” largely on the strength of this novel.
Collecting Out of Sight
First edition (1996, Delacorte Press, New York): Boards with dust jacket.
Approximate market values:
- Fine/Fine in dust jacket: $100–$300
- Signed first edition: $300–$800
- Without jacket: $15–$30
Value trajectory (2016–2026): Strong appreciation, driven by the film’s growing cult status.
Projected values (2026–2036): Continued strong demand. Signed copies should reach $600–$1,500.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this Leonard’s best novel? Many critics and Leonard himself considered it among his finest. The trunk scene, the Karen Sisco character, and the bittersweet ending give the novel an emotional weight that his more purely comic novels lack. It is the Leonard novel most likely to appeal to literary fiction readers.
What happened to Karen Sisco? She briefly appeared in a short-lived 2003 ABC television series, Karen Sisco, starring Carla Gugino. The show was well-reviewed but cancelled after one season. Leonard approved of Gugino’s performance.