In Detroit, Elmore attended Catholic grade school, and received a Jesuit education at the University of Detroit High School. He credits the experience with his ability to “think clearly.” His lifelong love of baseball and his unusual first name prompted his friends to give him the nickname Dutch, after Emil “Dutch” Leonard, the Washington Senators knuckleballer.

Elmore graduated from high school in 1944 and joined the Seabees. He was stationed in the Admiralty Islands near New Guinea. After the war, he went to college at the University of Detroit where he became interested in Ernest Hemingway and the idea of being a writer. After college, He married and took a job at Campbell-Ewald advertising agency as a copy boy, graduating to writing advertising copy for Chevrolet.

His goal was to be a commercial fiction writer so he chose the western as his initial subject matter, because he liked Westerns and because the demand was high for Western short stories.

His first published story was “Trail of the Apache” for Argosy Magazine in December 1951. Through the 1950s, Elmore would get up at 5:00 AM, two hours before leaving for work, and write thirty pulp westerns, and five western novels. Two of his stories wee made into films during the 50s: 3:10 To Yuma The Tall T, both good films.

By 1961, the Western fiction market had dried up because of all the television westerns. Elmore decided to pursue new fictional directions and write full time, so he quit his job, took his profit sharing check with the idea of kicking back and writing. But with a wife and five kids, those plans were shelved and he was forced him back into freelance advertising and writing short documentaries for Encyclopedia Britannica Films on such topics as "Settlement of the Mississippi Valley," “The Life of Julius Caesar.” Elemental as these projects were, the work taught him about screenwriting, which would help him later.

After Hombre sold to the movies in 1966, Elmore soon wrote his first crime novel, The Big Bounce. He also began a screenwriting career, adapting his own work, like The Moonshine War, for film. His side career in Hollywood would finance his book writing for the next several years.

In the early 70s, finally having enough financial freedom to write, he began to pen crime stories set in Detroit. It didn’t take long for works like Fifty-Two Pick-up, Swag and Unknown Man No. 89, to receive cult status from New York critics for their gritty realism and true-to-life dialog.

Elmore’s big breakthrough came in 1984 with La Brava, followed by the best-seller Glitz, which landed him on the cover of Newsweek: 'THE BIG THRILL. Mystery Writers Are Making A Killing.' The same year, Time magazine labeled him 'the Dickens of Detroit.'

Since then, Elmore has written about a book a year and has received widespread attention thanks in part to the success of movies made from his work such as “Get Shorty”, “Jackie Brown” and “Out of Sight.”

Today, at 76, Elmore is going strong and very involved in his book and movie projects. His latest novel, Tishomingo Blues, demonstrates that his is at the top of his game and then some. He still lives in the Detroit area, in Bloomfield Township, Michigan, with his wife, Christine. He enjoys being close to his children and grandchildren, most of whom live nearby. Elmore is frequently asked why he lives in Detroit when he could live anywhere. His answer, like his prose, is to the point. “I live in Detroit because I like it,” and he adds, “because I know the names of all the streets.”