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Pagan Babies
In Rwanda during the genocide, Hutu thugs storm into a church and kill everyone except Father Terry Dunn, on the alter saying his first mass. He's powerless to do anything about it--until one day he faces several of the killers and exacts a chilling penance. But is Terry Dunn really a priest?
He doesn't always appear to act like one. He comes home to Detroit and runs into Debbie Dewey who's doing standup at a comedy club. In her set, Debbie tells what it was like in prison, down for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Terry and Debie hit it off; they have the same sense of humor and similar goals in that both are out to raise money. Terry says for the Little Orphans of Rwanda; Debbie to score off a guy who conned her out of sixty-seven thousand dollars. This is Randy, now wealthy, who runs a fashionable restaurant and is connected to the Detroit Mafia.
It's Debbie who keeps prying until she learns the bizarre truth about Terry; Debbie who sells him on going in together for a much bigger payoff than either could manage alone. What happened in Rwanda remains alive through the unexpected twists and turns of the plot. But even with this tragic background. Pagan Babies comes off as Leonard's funniest straight-faced novel to date.
He doesn't always appear to act like one. He comes home to Detroit and runs into Debbie Dewey who's doing standup at a comedy club. In her set, Debbie tells what it was like in prison, down for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Terry and Debie hit it off; they have the same sense of humor and similar goals in that both are out to raise money. Terry says for the Little Orphans of Rwanda; Debbie to score off a guy who conned her out of sixty-seven thousand dollars. This is Randy, now wealthy, who runs a fashionable restaurant and is connected to the Detroit Mafia.
It's Debbie who keeps prying until she learns the bizarre truth about Terry; Debbie who sells him on going in together for a much bigger payoff than either could manage alone. What happened in Rwanda remains alive through the unexpected twists and turns of the plot. But even with this tragic background. Pagan Babies comes off as Leonard's funniest straight-faced novel to date.
263 pages, Hardcover
First published April 15, 2000
290 people are currently reading
1377 people want to read
About the author
Elmore Leonard
215 books3,738 followersElmore John Leonard lived in Dallas, Oklahoma City and Memphis before settling in Detroit in 1935. After serving in the navy, he studied English literature at the University of Detroit where he entered a short story competition. His earliest published novels in the 1950s were westerns, but Leonard went on to specialize in crime fiction and suspense thrillers, many of which have been adapted into motion pictures.
Father of Peter Leonard.
Father of Peter Leonard.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 343 reviews
July 12, 2025
Pagan Babies is like a puzzle. After I finished the book, I wondered to myself "what did I just read?" I reread sections of the novel to understand what really happened. Not only is this a tall tale, it is a complex coming of age story, which you might miss because it is also an awesome crime thriller.
The plot, in brief - Father Terry Dunn, a whiskey drinking priest from Detroit, is stationed in Rwanda, where he witnesses the genocide in which 800,000 Tutsis were murdered by the rival Hutus. After murdering a few Hutu gangsters as revenge, Terry returns to Detroit, where he hooks up with Debbie Dewey, an aspiring stand-up comedian, who wants to take revenge on Randy, the man who ripped her off and landed her in jail. But there are gangsters and lawmen on Terry's trail because he was a cigarette smuggler before he went to Rwanda as a priest.
The puzzle that is Terry Dunn, unravels slowly, in bits and pieces. We are given glimpses through other people’s conversations about Terry and his own confessions to Debbie. Debbie Dewey – who seems to have no luck with men. But will her experiences with Randy and Terry make her a better stand-up comic? The idea of a stand-up comic in prisoner uniform is a great one and somebody might steal it in real life. I felt like the novel was basically a coming of age tale of Terry and Debbie.
The first section of the book with Terry in Rwanda, reminded me of Graham Greene novels. Leonard is pretty descriptive about the sights, sounds and smells of Rwanda. But in typical Leonard style, it is described through direct conversations, phone calls and letters. It is amazing how Leonard is able to paint a vivid picture of Rwanda, mostly through dialog.
There are other interesting characters too. Mutt – the dumb redneck hitman, a familiar trope in Leonard novels. The sub-plot with him carrying out hits on behalf of the mob were outrageously funny. I was rooting for him to escape. I will never get tired of Leonard’s dumb gangsters like Louis Gara (Jackie Brown) and Armand Degas (Killshot). Randy – another conman like Terry who assumes multiple identities and might have finally found his footing in the restaurant business. Tony Amilia – the ageing mob boss, who has a soft corner for Debbie.
Elmore Leonard ties all of this – Rwanda, cigarette smuggling, restaurant business, stand-up comedy, lawyers, Italian mob and coming of age together effortlessly. Another great one from The Dutch.
The plot, in brief - Father Terry Dunn, a whiskey drinking priest from Detroit, is stationed in Rwanda, where he witnesses the genocide in which 800,000 Tutsis were murdered by the rival Hutus. After murdering a few Hutu gangsters as revenge, Terry returns to Detroit, where he hooks up with Debbie Dewey, an aspiring stand-up comedian, who wants to take revenge on Randy, the man who ripped her off and landed her in jail. But there are gangsters and lawmen on Terry's trail because he was a cigarette smuggler before he went to Rwanda as a priest.
The puzzle that is Terry Dunn, unravels slowly, in bits and pieces. We are given glimpses through other people’s conversations about Terry and his own confessions to Debbie. Debbie Dewey – who seems to have no luck with men. But will her experiences with Randy and Terry make her a better stand-up comic? The idea of a stand-up comic in prisoner uniform is a great one and somebody might steal it in real life. I felt like the novel was basically a coming of age tale of Terry and Debbie.
The first section of the book with Terry in Rwanda, reminded me of Graham Greene novels. Leonard is pretty descriptive about the sights, sounds and smells of Rwanda. But in typical Leonard style, it is described through direct conversations, phone calls and letters. It is amazing how Leonard is able to paint a vivid picture of Rwanda, mostly through dialog.
There are other interesting characters too. Mutt – the dumb redneck hitman, a familiar trope in Leonard novels. The sub-plot with him carrying out hits on behalf of the mob were outrageously funny. I was rooting for him to escape. I will never get tired of Leonard’s dumb gangsters like Louis Gara (Jackie Brown) and Armand Degas (Killshot). Randy – another conman like Terry who assumes multiple identities and might have finally found his footing in the restaurant business. Tony Amilia – the ageing mob boss, who has a soft corner for Debbie.
Elmore Leonard ties all of this – Rwanda, cigarette smuggling, restaurant business, stand-up comedy, lawyers, Italian mob and coming of age together effortlessly. Another great one from The Dutch.
May 27, 2016
If your idea of a literary feast is something in the way of a delicious crime thriller published in 2000 and prepared with characters that are just ripe, tasty dialogue, sharp wit, strong verve, evocative setting all cooked at just the right temperature and time, stop reading now and treat yourself to a steak well done titled Pagan Babies, the 36th and best Elmore Leonard novel of the nine that I've read so far. Part of the story's immense satisfaction was not knowing what corner it would turn next, terrain I'll reveal a bit without giving away the ending. I need to write my impressions down so I won't forget how or why I loved this novel as much as I did.
The church had become a tomb where forty-seven bodies turned to leather and stains had been lying on the concrete floor the past five years, though not lying where they had been shot with Kalashnikovs or hacked to death with machetes. The benches had been removed and the bodies reassembled: men, women and small children laid in rows of skulls and spines, femurs, fragments of cloth stuck to mummified remains, many of the adults missing feet, all missing bones that had been carried off by scavenging dogs.
Fr. Terry Dunn, a bearded young American who makes no effort to dress like a priest, hears confession when he feels like it in the yard of the rectory, recites Mass on Easter and Christmas, plays with the children, takes photographs and hands out clothes that his brother Francis sends. Terry's village, Arisimbi, like most of the villages in Rwanda, is five years gone from a genocide by the Hutus, who sealed the borders and set about massacring the Tutsis. Terry arrived in Rwanda the day the killing began. Attempting to protect his congregation in the church, he was reciting his first Mass when the Hutus came and slaughtered each Tutsi while Terry watched.
Though the Rwandese Patriotic Army drove the Hutus from power and now keep the peace, there are bad men still around, including one in a green checkered shirt named Bernard who brags about his atrocities to Terry in confession, as well as share his vision that the killing will begin again. The priest has a live-in housekeeper named Chantelle Nyamwase, a young Tutsi whose left arm was severed at the elbow during the genocide. Asking her if she thinks he does any good here, Chantelle tells Terry he could be doing a lot more. The morning after she brings news from his brother that their mother has died, she wakes to find the priest gone. And her Russian Tokarev pistol is missing.
Driving his Volvo wagon three hours to Kigali, Terry withdraws fifty thousand francs from the bank, purchases Sabena Air tickets and returns to the village to see his friend in the RPA sector office, Laurent Kamweya. Terry asks Laurent to use half the money to pay for forty-seven graves to be dug in the church courtyard and to give Chantelle the other half of the money and airline tickets to go on a holiday. He requests a ride to the airport and for information on where he can find Bernard. Directed to the home of a beer lady who makes her own banana brew, urwagwa, Terry confronts Bernard and his three friends and asks them to turn themselves in.
Bernard, smiling now, said, "You must be a crazy person." He spoke to his friends in Kinyarwanda and now they were smiling.
Terry said, "They were with you that day?"
"Oh yes, these and others. It was our duty," Bernard said. "We say, 'Tugire gukora akazi.' Let us go do the work, and we did, uh? Go now, we don't want you here."
"Soon as I give you your penance," Terry said.
There's something great about a well-told revenge story, to being introduced to rotten, no good sons of bitches who deserve what's coming to them. These are the kinds of men who usually get away with their crimes in our world, but in the world of a great novel, they get what's coming to them. And Pagan Babies is just getting started.
In Florida, we're introduced to Debbie Dewey, finishing up a three-year sentence at Sawgrass Correctional Institution for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon; she drove a car into her ex-boyfriend Randy after he cleaned her out of every cent she owned, wrecked her BMW and got rid of her dog. Debbie had been working as an investigator for Terry's brother Francis, a personal injury lawyer in Detroit who's in Florida with his homemaker wife Mary Pat and two daughters. Fran thinks he's being discreet by claiming he's golfing while he's visiting Debbie, whose plan after she's free is to return to Detroit and restart her standup comedy career, using her incarceration as material.
Back in Detroit, Terry is staying with Fran while his sister-in-law and nieces are still in Florida. In addition to sending his brother T-shirts and money for the last five years, Fran has smoothed over an indictment from the Wayne County prosecutor for a jam Terry got himself into, driving a truckload of smuggled cigarettes up from Kentucky. Terry's partners Johnny and Dickie Pajonny were arrested and gave Terry up, claiming he was the mastermind behind the tax fraud. Terry left for Rwanda to visit his uncle Tibor, who'd served as the priest in Arisimbi for forty years. While the D.A. is convinced of Fr. Dunn's innocence, Johnny Pajonny believes Terry owes him ten grand from the cigarette job and at his mother's funeral, showed up to question Debbie about it.
Fran takes Terry to a nightclub to introduce him to Debbie after her gig. Irritated by Fran and wanting to hear more from Terry, she offers to drive the priest home. In a stretch of some of the best writing I've read from Elmore Leonard, Debbie uses her candor and wit to break Terry down softly and get to the bottom of what he's really doing back in Detroit and what his story is. Whether she's that good an interrogator and suspicious of men, or Terry is that generous with the truth around her, he confides that . It doesn't deter Debbie from inviting Terry back to her place, where the interrogation continues post-coitus.
In the dark he offered a little more.
"You're the only person who knows."
"You haven't told Fran?"
"Not while he's talking to the prosecutor."
"No one during all that time in Africa?"
"No one."
"Not even your one-armed housekeeper?"
Look at that--she'd picked up on Chantelle.
"Not even her."
"She lived with you?"
"Almost the whole time I was down there."
"Is she pretty?"
"Miss Rwanda, if they ever have a pageant."
"Did you sleep with her?"
Debbie asked it looking straight ahead.
"If you're wondering about AIDS it was never a threat."
"Why would I worry about AIDS?"
"I said 'If you were wondering.'"
Confident that Terry is back in town working on a scam, Debbie tells him that her ex Randy Agley conned a local society matron into marriage and as part of the divorce settlement, received a few million dollars, which Randy used to open a high-class restaurant catering to auto executives, Randy's. The snake, as Debbie sees it, still owes her sixty-seven thousand dollars, even after she ran him over. Planning on a slip-and-fall at Randy's, she believes a priest slipping and falling might be even better. Johnny Pajonny gets in on the scam, the three of them unaware that Randy's silent partner is Vincent Moraco, the gangster Terry and Johnny sold their tax-exempt cigarettes to.
Pagan Babies is Elmore Leonard in peak form. The author is a master at crafting compelling characters whose healthy desires or criminal pathology reveal themselves not through purple prose, but through beautifully crafted dialogue. This more than any of his other Elmore Leonard novel I've read so far also introduces reversals and surprises that feel completely organic to the characters, rather than an author shoehorning his characters into doing pulp fiction plots. I had no idea where this story was headed and flew through the pages, staying up past my curfew the last night to do it. This is almost always a sign I've read a great book.
The attention to detail is impeccable. While genocide might not be a subject some want to encounter in their crime fiction, I appreciated the historical and cultural details on Rwanda in the front of the book and felt Leonard had supreme affection for the Tutsi people. Terry uses the genocide and his experiences in it to stop cold anyone in Detroit who tries to push him and those details similarly got my attention as a reader. The reveal on what pagan babies refers to was sublime. Leonard spares no expense when it comes to putting the reader inside cigarette smuggling, the restaurant business or standup comedy, which Debbie's routines and her comic philosophy feeling very plausible.
Leonard brings three formidable women to the table, two of which I've discussed at length, another I barely hinted at but who is not who she initially appears to be. Great female characters and reversals in expectation are two areas that seem so obvious and yet so many authors struggle with, especially if they're in a hurry. In contrast to a lot of novels I've read--a few of them by Elmore Leonard--that end when the author seems tired of writing, there was nothing extraneous about this one. No fat. Every character, every detail, is there because it pays off in some valuable way. This book is like an ATM for book lovers.
Here's my list of Elmore Leonard novels ranked from favorite to least favorite:
Pagan Babies
Stick
Killshot
Cuba Libre
Pronto
Be Cool
Get Shorty
La Brava
Djibouti
The church had become a tomb where forty-seven bodies turned to leather and stains had been lying on the concrete floor the past five years, though not lying where they had been shot with Kalashnikovs or hacked to death with machetes. The benches had been removed and the bodies reassembled: men, women and small children laid in rows of skulls and spines, femurs, fragments of cloth stuck to mummified remains, many of the adults missing feet, all missing bones that had been carried off by scavenging dogs.
Fr. Terry Dunn, a bearded young American who makes no effort to dress like a priest, hears confession when he feels like it in the yard of the rectory, recites Mass on Easter and Christmas, plays with the children, takes photographs and hands out clothes that his brother Francis sends. Terry's village, Arisimbi, like most of the villages in Rwanda, is five years gone from a genocide by the Hutus, who sealed the borders and set about massacring the Tutsis. Terry arrived in Rwanda the day the killing began. Attempting to protect his congregation in the church, he was reciting his first Mass when the Hutus came and slaughtered each Tutsi while Terry watched.
Though the Rwandese Patriotic Army drove the Hutus from power and now keep the peace, there are bad men still around, including one in a green checkered shirt named Bernard who brags about his atrocities to Terry in confession, as well as share his vision that the killing will begin again. The priest has a live-in housekeeper named Chantelle Nyamwase, a young Tutsi whose left arm was severed at the elbow during the genocide. Asking her if she thinks he does any good here, Chantelle tells Terry he could be doing a lot more. The morning after she brings news from his brother that their mother has died, she wakes to find the priest gone. And her Russian Tokarev pistol is missing.
Driving his Volvo wagon three hours to Kigali, Terry withdraws fifty thousand francs from the bank, purchases Sabena Air tickets and returns to the village to see his friend in the RPA sector office, Laurent Kamweya. Terry asks Laurent to use half the money to pay for forty-seven graves to be dug in the church courtyard and to give Chantelle the other half of the money and airline tickets to go on a holiday. He requests a ride to the airport and for information on where he can find Bernard. Directed to the home of a beer lady who makes her own banana brew, urwagwa, Terry confronts Bernard and his three friends and asks them to turn themselves in.
Bernard, smiling now, said, "You must be a crazy person." He spoke to his friends in Kinyarwanda and now they were smiling.
Terry said, "They were with you that day?"
"Oh yes, these and others. It was our duty," Bernard said. "We say, 'Tugire gukora akazi.' Let us go do the work, and we did, uh? Go now, we don't want you here."
"Soon as I give you your penance," Terry said.
There's something great about a well-told revenge story, to being introduced to rotten, no good sons of bitches who deserve what's coming to them. These are the kinds of men who usually get away with their crimes in our world, but in the world of a great novel, they get what's coming to them. And Pagan Babies is just getting started.
In Florida, we're introduced to Debbie Dewey, finishing up a three-year sentence at Sawgrass Correctional Institution for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon; she drove a car into her ex-boyfriend Randy after he cleaned her out of every cent she owned, wrecked her BMW and got rid of her dog. Debbie had been working as an investigator for Terry's brother Francis, a personal injury lawyer in Detroit who's in Florida with his homemaker wife Mary Pat and two daughters. Fran thinks he's being discreet by claiming he's golfing while he's visiting Debbie, whose plan after she's free is to return to Detroit and restart her standup comedy career, using her incarceration as material.
Back in Detroit, Terry is staying with Fran while his sister-in-law and nieces are still in Florida. In addition to sending his brother T-shirts and money for the last five years, Fran has smoothed over an indictment from the Wayne County prosecutor for a jam Terry got himself into, driving a truckload of smuggled cigarettes up from Kentucky. Terry's partners Johnny and Dickie Pajonny were arrested and gave Terry up, claiming he was the mastermind behind the tax fraud. Terry left for Rwanda to visit his uncle Tibor, who'd served as the priest in Arisimbi for forty years. While the D.A. is convinced of Fr. Dunn's innocence, Johnny Pajonny believes Terry owes him ten grand from the cigarette job and at his mother's funeral, showed up to question Debbie about it.
Fran takes Terry to a nightclub to introduce him to Debbie after her gig. Irritated by Fran and wanting to hear more from Terry, she offers to drive the priest home. In a stretch of some of the best writing I've read from Elmore Leonard, Debbie uses her candor and wit to break Terry down softly and get to the bottom of what he's really doing back in Detroit and what his story is. Whether she's that good an interrogator and suspicious of men, or Terry is that generous with the truth around her, he confides that . It doesn't deter Debbie from inviting Terry back to her place, where the interrogation continues post-coitus.
In the dark he offered a little more.
"You're the only person who knows."
"You haven't told Fran?"
"Not while he's talking to the prosecutor."
"No one during all that time in Africa?"
"No one."
"Not even your one-armed housekeeper?"
Look at that--she'd picked up on Chantelle.
"Not even her."
"She lived with you?"
"Almost the whole time I was down there."
"Is she pretty?"
"Miss Rwanda, if they ever have a pageant."
"Did you sleep with her?"
Debbie asked it looking straight ahead.
"If you're wondering about AIDS it was never a threat."
"Why would I worry about AIDS?"
"I said 'If you were wondering.'"
Confident that Terry is back in town working on a scam, Debbie tells him that her ex Randy Agley conned a local society matron into marriage and as part of the divorce settlement, received a few million dollars, which Randy used to open a high-class restaurant catering to auto executives, Randy's. The snake, as Debbie sees it, still owes her sixty-seven thousand dollars, even after she ran him over. Planning on a slip-and-fall at Randy's, she believes a priest slipping and falling might be even better. Johnny Pajonny gets in on the scam, the three of them unaware that Randy's silent partner is Vincent Moraco, the gangster Terry and Johnny sold their tax-exempt cigarettes to.
Pagan Babies is Elmore Leonard in peak form. The author is a master at crafting compelling characters whose healthy desires or criminal pathology reveal themselves not through purple prose, but through beautifully crafted dialogue. This more than any of his other Elmore Leonard novel I've read so far also introduces reversals and surprises that feel completely organic to the characters, rather than an author shoehorning his characters into doing pulp fiction plots. I had no idea where this story was headed and flew through the pages, staying up past my curfew the last night to do it. This is almost always a sign I've read a great book.
The attention to detail is impeccable. While genocide might not be a subject some want to encounter in their crime fiction, I appreciated the historical and cultural details on Rwanda in the front of the book and felt Leonard had supreme affection for the Tutsi people. Terry uses the genocide and his experiences in it to stop cold anyone in Detroit who tries to push him and those details similarly got my attention as a reader. The reveal on what pagan babies refers to was sublime. Leonard spares no expense when it comes to putting the reader inside cigarette smuggling, the restaurant business or standup comedy, which Debbie's routines and her comic philosophy feeling very plausible.
Leonard brings three formidable women to the table, two of which I've discussed at length, another I barely hinted at but who is not who she initially appears to be. Great female characters and reversals in expectation are two areas that seem so obvious and yet so many authors struggle with, especially if they're in a hurry. In contrast to a lot of novels I've read--a few of them by Elmore Leonard--that end when the author seems tired of writing, there was nothing extraneous about this one. No fat. Every character, every detail, is there because it pays off in some valuable way. This book is like an ATM for book lovers.
Here's my list of Elmore Leonard novels ranked from favorite to least favorite:
Pagan Babies
Stick
Killshot
Cuba Libre
Pronto
Be Cool
Get Shorty
La Brava
Djibouti
March 6, 2024
Many years ago, back during the Middle Ages when I was a young and very impressionable lad attending St. Anthony's grade school, we would occasionally be visited by missionaries who had come to Missoula hoping to raise money to save the poor pagan babies who were living in Africa. The nuns encouraged us to believe that our own reward in heaven would be even brighter if we would only bring our nickels and dimes to donate to the cause of converting and saving the pagan babies who would otherwise have to spend all of eternity in Limbo if they died without being baptized into the Catholic faith.
Well, what can I say? I was seven years old and a True Believer, and so naturally, I did what I could to help out, even if it meant occasionally giving my weekly allowance to the missionaries rather than dropping it into the candy machine or spending it buying comic books.
With all of that in mind, I thoroughly enjoyed Pagan Babies, doubtless even more because of the experiences of my youth. At the heart of the novel is a priest named Terry Dunn. Father Dunn leaves his native Detroit under difficult circumstances and arrives in Rwanda during the genocide in which tens of thousands of Tutsis were murdered by their rivals, the Hutus. Very early in his ministry, his entire congregation is slaughtered in front of his eyes as he is saying mass one Sunday.
As the book opens, the bodies are still lying in the church in an advanced stage of decay. A shellshocked Father Dunn sits in his yard, drinking Johnnie Walker Red and hearing the occasional confession. He now says mass only on Christmas and Easter. He has a live-in housekeeper who lost most of one arm to the Hutus and who tries to take good care of the priest.
After some time, Dunn decides to return home to Detroit, perhaps to raise money for the support of the people in his village. There he reconnects with his family and encounters a cast of characters that could only come from the mind of Elmore Leonard. Principal among them is Debbie Dewey, an aspiring comedian fresh out of prison, whose routine centers on the fact that she ran over her boyfriend with a Buick Riviera. (Actually, it was a Ford Escort, but Debbie believes that the Riviera will get bigger laughs.)
From there the story takes a number of great twists and turns. The humor is dry and intelligent and the dialog is pure E.L. If your a fan of Leonard's work and you've somehow missed this one, seek it out. It's among his best, which is saying quite a bit.
Well, what can I say? I was seven years old and a True Believer, and so naturally, I did what I could to help out, even if it meant occasionally giving my weekly allowance to the missionaries rather than dropping it into the candy machine or spending it buying comic books.
With all of that in mind, I thoroughly enjoyed Pagan Babies, doubtless even more because of the experiences of my youth. At the heart of the novel is a priest named Terry Dunn. Father Dunn leaves his native Detroit under difficult circumstances and arrives in Rwanda during the genocide in which tens of thousands of Tutsis were murdered by their rivals, the Hutus. Very early in his ministry, his entire congregation is slaughtered in front of his eyes as he is saying mass one Sunday.
As the book opens, the bodies are still lying in the church in an advanced stage of decay. A shellshocked Father Dunn sits in his yard, drinking Johnnie Walker Red and hearing the occasional confession. He now says mass only on Christmas and Easter. He has a live-in housekeeper who lost most of one arm to the Hutus and who tries to take good care of the priest.
After some time, Dunn decides to return home to Detroit, perhaps to raise money for the support of the people in his village. There he reconnects with his family and encounters a cast of characters that could only come from the mind of Elmore Leonard. Principal among them is Debbie Dewey, an aspiring comedian fresh out of prison, whose routine centers on the fact that she ran over her boyfriend with a Buick Riviera. (Actually, it was a Ford Escort, but Debbie believes that the Riviera will get bigger laughs.)
From there the story takes a number of great twists and turns. The humor is dry and intelligent and the dialog is pure E.L. If your a fan of Leonard's work and you've somehow missed this one, seek it out. It's among his best, which is saying quite a bit.
May 29, 2020
For an Elmore Leonard book, Pagan Babies was a bit different in its subtlety. Most of the way through, it seemed atypical of his work. It was every bit as engaging, but it was almost too stayed, too calm in comparison to some of his other novels. But then the final chapters come into play and Leonard shines like a beacon of human unpredictability.
The best way that I can describe Leonard’s writing is that he creates characters that we, the readers, will never be. He creates characters with values, hopes, and dreams that differ from our own, and he does it so well that their decisions fall in line with who his characters are while at the same time, causes us to gasp. And gasping through the words of a writer is a wonderful thing.
The ending is perfect, complete with that feeling that comes when you believe you’re smarter than everyone around you only to find out that someone else saw right through you. Thank you, Elmore Leonard, for one more walk through the infinite variety of humanity and the unpredictability of the human mind as driven by the human spirit.
The best way that I can describe Leonard’s writing is that he creates characters that we, the readers, will never be. He creates characters with values, hopes, and dreams that differ from our own, and he does it so well that their decisions fall in line with who his characters are while at the same time, causes us to gasp. And gasping through the words of a writer is a wonderful thing.
The ending is perfect, complete with that feeling that comes when you believe you’re smarter than everyone around you only to find out that someone else saw right through you. Thank you, Elmore Leonard, for one more walk through the infinite variety of humanity and the unpredictability of the human mind as driven by the human spirit.
July 5, 2019
First things first, what a terrific read this is and it comes with everything that I have come to expect from the wit and ingenuity of Elmore Leonard.
Dark, dry humour, sword fencing with dialogue and never knowing what’s around the corner and that’s just for starters.
The story starts in Rwanda in 1996 at the height of the Tutsi genocide. Father Terry Dunn is giving mass when a bunch of Hutu young men charge in and slaughters his entire congregation. After handing out some very personal retribution father Dunn decides to go back to America to raise funds to help with the aftermath.
This is where the fun starts.
Nobody, and I mean nobody, is who you think they are.
The whole story is littered with mob gangsters, would be gangsters and just down right low lives.
Everybody is chasing money; everybody thinks that they are the ones at the head of the pack. There is so much double dealing going on that it will make your head spin.
As I said at the beginning, this is terrific stuff.
So, if you like books with dark humour and dazzling dialogue this one's for you.
Recommended 4 star read.
Dark, dry humour, sword fencing with dialogue and never knowing what’s around the corner and that’s just for starters.
The story starts in Rwanda in 1996 at the height of the Tutsi genocide. Father Terry Dunn is giving mass when a bunch of Hutu young men charge in and slaughters his entire congregation. After handing out some very personal retribution father Dunn decides to go back to America to raise funds to help with the aftermath.
This is where the fun starts.
Nobody, and I mean nobody, is who you think they are.
The whole story is littered with mob gangsters, would be gangsters and just down right low lives.
Everybody is chasing money; everybody thinks that they are the ones at the head of the pack. There is so much double dealing going on that it will make your head spin.
As I said at the beginning, this is terrific stuff.
So, if you like books with dark humour and dazzling dialogue this one's for you.
Recommended 4 star read.
June 11, 2024
Elmore Leonard is the benchmark by which all Crime Writers, British or American,must be judged. He was the absolute master and with Pagan Babies he amply demonstrates why. Cool,laconic writing and with great characters,this is up there with his best.
July 12, 2023
06/2015
Starts in Africa, with genocide, memories of it anyway. Intense for me. One white guy. Follows him back to America. Then the story becomes typical, um, classic Leonard. Detroit and gangsters.
Starts in Africa, with genocide, memories of it anyway. Intense for me. One white guy. Follows him back to America. Then the story becomes typical, um, classic Leonard. Detroit and gangsters.
October 19, 2022
If I said there was something so sweet about Bandits, so tenderhearted, well, this one’s of the same heart. A Rwandan genocide; a con man in Detroit. There’s just something about reading Elmore that puts me in mind of, bear with me, Somerset Maugham. Specifically, this one line Maugham wrote. About God, which is really about human nature, about how of all the things we’ll credit to him it’s not common-sense or tolerance. “If he knew as much about human nature as I do,” Maugham wrote, “he’d know how much goodness there is even in the worst and how much wickedness in the best.”
Goodness in the worst; wickedness in the best. Pretty much.
(At least if there’s a title that can follow A Feast of Snakes, it might be Pagan Babies. Terry: “There aren’t that many pagans anymore. They’ve all been converted to something. A lot of Seventh Day Adventists.”)
Goodness in the worst; wickedness in the best. Pretty much.
(At least if there’s a title that can follow A Feast of Snakes, it might be Pagan Babies. Terry: “There aren’t that many pagans anymore. They’ve all been converted to something. A lot of Seventh Day Adventists.”)
July 11, 2017
‘Pagan Babies’ is a fair entertainment about cons tricking other cons, and everybody is thinking they are two steps ahead of the others. Meanwhile, one guy who is dressing up like a priest is dealing himself into the mix. Is he a con or not?
Terry Dunn was avoiding an arrest in Detroit. He drove a truck full of cigarettes for friends, but the friends were selling the cigarettes illegally. Did Terry know, or is it like he said, he simply drove the truck? In any case, Terry moved to Rwanda with the take from the cigarettes when the Feds started asking questions and became a priest, while the two friends went to prison. The priest thing seemed interesting to Terry, but he didn’t take it too serious - until the Hutus began slaughtering Tutus in his church in front of him. For some reason, the Hutus ignored him. When it was over, Dunn went to his house and got a drink, thinking. So, he stayed, drinking, although he no longer had a congregation, but he did have a church full of rotting bodies, and he would hear occasional confessions, saying Mass sometimes when asked.
Five years later and Terry has returned to Detroit to say hi to his brother Fran and his family, maybe fix up his situation with the Feds. Francis Dunn is a lawyer and he stays on the legitimate side of the law, but besides trying to arrange getting the charges dropped for his brother Terry, he is helping out a client, Debbie Dewey. Terry meets Debbie and they hit it off.
Debbie wants the money her ex-boyfriend stole from her. Terry wants to square things with the two friends who went to prison for selling the cigarettes. They both need money.
Rock and roll!
Two and a half stars.
Terry Dunn was avoiding an arrest in Detroit. He drove a truck full of cigarettes for friends, but the friends were selling the cigarettes illegally. Did Terry know, or is it like he said, he simply drove the truck? In any case, Terry moved to Rwanda with the take from the cigarettes when the Feds started asking questions and became a priest, while the two friends went to prison. The priest thing seemed interesting to Terry, but he didn’t take it too serious - until the Hutus began slaughtering Tutus in his church in front of him. For some reason, the Hutus ignored him. When it was over, Dunn went to his house and got a drink, thinking. So, he stayed, drinking, although he no longer had a congregation, but he did have a church full of rotting bodies, and he would hear occasional confessions, saying Mass sometimes when asked.
Five years later and Terry has returned to Detroit to say hi to his brother Fran and his family, maybe fix up his situation with the Feds. Francis Dunn is a lawyer and he stays on the legitimate side of the law, but besides trying to arrange getting the charges dropped for his brother Terry, he is helping out a client, Debbie Dewey. Terry meets Debbie and they hit it off.
Debbie wants the money her ex-boyfriend stole from her. Terry wants to square things with the two friends who went to prison for selling the cigarettes. They both need money.
Rock and roll!
Two and a half stars.
June 1, 2016
Fast-paced crime novel involving a missionary priest, a female ex-con, a Detroit mob boss, a hit man, and a scheme to score $250,000. Great characters and dialogue. Worth reading.
January 21, 2008
Oh yeah, that's right. Before I had a real job I read all the time. Typical Elmore Leonard. If you like his stuff, you'll like this. Nothing life changing here, just pure entertainment.
January 1, 2024
Each December I ignore, for the most part, my reading groups and my To Read list, and treat myself to books by my favorite writers only. This month, that has included Raymond Chandler, Thomas Hardy and this selection from Elmore Leonard. I get a yearning for Leonard's amusing characters and dialogue if I go a while between reads. Pagan Babies was published in 2000, and relates the story of Terry Dunn, a missionary priest at work in Rwanda. Terry gets word that his mother has died back in the States, and returns to his native Detroit. I found the section on Rwanda to be an unusually slow start for Leonard, but the pace picks up quickly in Detroit. There Terry meets up with his brother Fran, an attorney, and his assistant Debbie Dewey who has just gotten out of the penitentiary after serving three years for assault with a deadly weapon. She had run over her deadbeat ex with a car. Terry also soon runs into brothers he's known since school days who want their money from a cigarette resale deal Terry was involved in with them. He sold them down the river and escaped to Rwanda with all the profits. Finally, Debbie's ex has recovered and is running a profitable restaurant / upscale whorehouse, but has the Detroit Mob after him for a cut of the action. These plot lines intermingle and the usual Elmore Leonard comic mayhem ensues. The title Pagan Babies comes from a memory one of the characters has of cans that were set out in parochial school collecting donations for the "Pagan Babies."
I spent five years in Detroit in the early 80's, so with each Leonard novel set there, I get an enjoyable dose of familiar places. Here, we have Woodward Avenue, Greektown, Bloomfield Hills, Grosse Pointe, the General Motors Building (which I see is now called Cadillac Place, literally a half mile from where we lived), the Renaissance Center (RenCen), Dearborn, 16 Mile Road and the Lodge Freeway.
If you like crime fiction in which nogoodniks are working deferent angles in a 3-way situation, Pagan Babies is right up your alley. In that sense, there is a parallel to the wonderful Rum Punch, which became Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown, both of which involving a big money prize and of course people's lives on the line. But I think Leonard achieves a climactic scene of greater tension in Pagan Babies.
I spent five years in Detroit in the early 80's, so with each Leonard novel set there, I get an enjoyable dose of familiar places. Here, we have Woodward Avenue, Greektown, Bloomfield Hills, Grosse Pointe, the General Motors Building (which I see is now called Cadillac Place, literally a half mile from where we lived), the Renaissance Center (RenCen), Dearborn, 16 Mile Road and the Lodge Freeway.
If you like crime fiction in which nogoodniks are working deferent angles in a 3-way situation, Pagan Babies is right up your alley. In that sense, there is a parallel to the wonderful Rum Punch, which became Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown, both of which involving a big money prize and of course people's lives on the line. But I think Leonard achieves a climactic scene of greater tension in Pagan Babies.
June 8, 2012
Elmore Leonard is known for his sparse writing style--many of the chapters are nearly all dialog. For crime fiction, that works. Especially with his strong characters. Yeah, some of them were stock characters--all the mob guys and dishonest lawyers in the book. But two of the main ones were pretty unique: Father Dunn, a priest, witness to the genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda, lost and unclear what he can do to help, who is also an ex con-man fleeing the law. And Debbie Dewey, who spent three years in jail when she tried to murder her husband when he swindled her and is now trying to make it as a hip stand-up comedian, drawing on her prison experiences for material. The contrast between the brutality of the scene in Rwanda and the sometimes humorous inept mob scene in Detroit was also enough to keep me reading.
An enjoyable tale, a fast read, good crime writing. Not Shakespeare, doesn't really say anything profound, but it's not trying to do that.
Highly recommended.
An enjoyable tale, a fast read, good crime writing. Not Shakespeare, doesn't really say anything profound, but it's not trying to do that.
Highly recommended.
November 9, 2021
A solid three stars. Like most Elmore Leonard novels, the dialogue was great, the story was quite slick, and the writing was pro. With a quick pace, and a low page count, you'll get through this novel in a few sittings.
Personally, I thought the novel started off better than it ended. The early part taking place in Africa had my all of my attention; the setting, the predicament, the tension, all of which I found riveting. When the story and main character migrated to Detroit, I found the tale becoming a more run-of-the-mill crime caper that didn't have the same pressure and profundity as the first act. In fact, I often wished the story had stayed where it started.
Personally, I thought the novel started off better than it ended. The early part taking place in Africa had my all of my attention; the setting, the predicament, the tension, all of which I found riveting. When the story and main character migrated to Detroit, I found the tale becoming a more run-of-the-mill crime caper that didn't have the same pressure and profundity as the first act. In fact, I often wished the story had stayed where it started.
August 25, 2018
Love the way Elmore Leonard uses low life vernacular so easily in the mouths of his gangsters, almost creating the illusion you're listening to actors playing gangsters in films.
A different twist in this book involving scenes in Rwanda during the inter tribal massacres and his equating of gangsters and thugs in that situation to similar types in the US. Certainly a different landscape to many of his purely US based stories, though much of the book also has a US backdrop.
Easy writing style and unputdownable.
A different twist in this book involving scenes in Rwanda during the inter tribal massacres and his equating of gangsters and thugs in that situation to similar types in the US. Certainly a different landscape to many of his purely US based stories, though much of the book also has a US backdrop.
Easy writing style and unputdownable.
April 6, 2023
The English of the African characters was hard to read at times. Had to slow down to absorb what they were saying more carefully. I was really glad after Terry went to Detroit. Didn’t have to worry about the weird grammar issues with the language anymore, but there was still a strange writing format to the book.
For one thing, as soon as Terry moved back to Detroit, the book turned into mostly dialogue. There was very little actual description or narrative throughout this story. There were even times where the author would put both of the characters' dialog into the same paragraph. He wouldn’t always separate them out. Also, for most of the paragraphs that didn’t contain any quotation marks, the author was simply describing what his characters were talking about. He would just continue the conversation in a different format.
While the plot was marginally interesting, I couldn’t get on board with the characters. They didn’t hold my attention and honestly, I didn’t care if they succeeded in the end or not. I didn’t care about anyone in this book.
For one thing, as soon as Terry moved back to Detroit, the book turned into mostly dialogue. There was very little actual description or narrative throughout this story. There were even times where the author would put both of the characters' dialog into the same paragraph. He wouldn’t always separate them out. Also, for most of the paragraphs that didn’t contain any quotation marks, the author was simply describing what his characters were talking about. He would just continue the conversation in a different format.
While the plot was marginally interesting, I couldn’t get on board with the characters. They didn’t hold my attention and honestly, I didn’t care if they succeeded in the end or not. I didn’t care about anyone in this book.
March 14, 2019
It starts strong but it loses steam when it maintains its focus in the states. Making the entire book about Africa would risk dealing in stereotypes (more so) but I was a lot more interested in the lives o the Rwandans and the protagonist's life in Rwanda.
July 3, 2020
Ma nije loše. 3.5*
Prva knjiga koju čitam od E. Leonarda.
Ruanda me najviše zainteresirala da uzmem ovo čitati.
... Zanimljiva postava priče...
Sve započinje odmah u "glavu" o genocidu u Ruandi, zemlji sitnoj i prenapučenoj, u kojoj radio javlja gdje su ti koje treba klati. I to se odvija pred očima mladog svećenika u crkvi koji s oltara gleda maskr, služeći svoju prvu misu.
.... Kasnije kako priča teče otkriva se pozadina tog mladog svećenika i nije sve onako kako se čini....
Prva knjiga koju čitam od E. Leonarda.
Ruanda me najviše zainteresirala da uzmem ovo čitati.
... Zanimljiva postava priče...
Sve započinje odmah u "glavu" o genocidu u Ruandi, zemlji sitnoj i prenapučenoj, u kojoj radio javlja gdje su ti koje treba klati. I to se odvija pred očima mladog svećenika u crkvi koji s oltara gleda maskr, služeći svoju prvu misu.
.... Kasnije kako priča teče otkriva se pozadina tog mladog svećenika i nije sve onako kako se čini....
March 11, 2021
It’s Elmore Leonard what mate needs to be said. It starts with a scam, it morphs into a multilayered scam, which turns into the opportunity for multiple crosses and double crosses to take place all with great humor. Another fun book by this author.
March 10, 2013
If you're a priest, you can get away with murder. Or a big con. If you move back to the States to get away from the images of genocide in your head, meet an attractive ex-con who wants to do stand up, and play her scumbag ex and the mob for 250 grand. What's the harm? You're doing this for the Rwandan orphans, those brave kids who saw their parents get hacked to pieces. But, you're not really doing it for them. Or are you? And who is this girl you're with, who seems to totally get you and has cons of her own? Add in a simple contract hit guy and your childhood friend, the one who ratted you out on a cigarette smuggling operation that made you go to Africa in the first place, and you have Elmore Leonard's latest hangout novel of chatty criminals, criminal love, and general weirdness. In this novel, one character plans on robbing a store. He pulls back his coat to reveal his gun, the cashier girl says, "Yeah?" and he decides not to do it, thinking she's too dumb.
We have an interesting idea--the juxtaposition of the usual Leonardian criminals and cons with the specter of a recent genocide. Why does he do this? As a joke to say that his regular characters have small first world problems and that their measly concerns don't really add up to hardship? Because these are small time killers and crooks, who want a little money. They don't hate each other enough to murder them. It's just business. And they deceive. They lie. Here people surprise you. They are not what they look like. In the genocide, if you were the wrong ethnicity, you knew where you stood. Things were honest. Things were much more direct. Here, back in Detroit, everyone is slippery and no one knows what they will do next. They make it up as they go along and they can change their minds.
We have an interesting idea--the juxtaposition of the usual Leonardian criminals and cons with the specter of a recent genocide. Why does he do this? As a joke to say that his regular characters have small first world problems and that their measly concerns don't really add up to hardship? Because these are small time killers and crooks, who want a little money. They don't hate each other enough to murder them. It's just business. And they deceive. They lie. Here people surprise you. They are not what they look like. In the genocide, if you were the wrong ethnicity, you knew where you stood. Things were honest. Things were much more direct. Here, back in Detroit, everyone is slippery and no one knows what they will do next. They make it up as they go along and they can change their minds.
June 11, 2015
Elmore Leonard books are always, at the very least, fun reads. I don't know that I'd list any of them among my very favorite novels, but of the ten or so I've read, none were bad, and most quite good.
I knew nothing about "Pagan Babies" before getting into it, so the opening section came as a bit of a surprise: a priest hearing confessions in Rwanda shortly after the genocide of the early 1990s. But we leave the priest after a couple of chapters and head to Detroit, where the priest's brother works as a personal injury lawyer whose assistant just got out of jail for assaulting her ex, a low-level mobster; and we're in more familiar territory.
The priest returns to the states, falls for his brother's assistant, who quickly figures out he isn't really a priest. The two of them come up with a scheme to extort money from her ex, who stole money from her before her attempted assault.
Leonard's dialogue it almost goes without saying is excellent. As always when I read one of his novels, I found myself re-reading certain lines, continually impressed by the man's talent for writing believable, engaging conversation.
I knew nothing about "Pagan Babies" before getting into it, so the opening section came as a bit of a surprise: a priest hearing confessions in Rwanda shortly after the genocide of the early 1990s. But we leave the priest after a couple of chapters and head to Detroit, where the priest's brother works as a personal injury lawyer whose assistant just got out of jail for assaulting her ex, a low-level mobster; and we're in more familiar territory.
The priest returns to the states, falls for his brother's assistant, who quickly figures out he isn't really a priest. The two of them come up with a scheme to extort money from her ex, who stole money from her before her attempted assault.
Leonard's dialogue it almost goes without saying is excellent. As always when I read one of his novels, I found myself re-reading certain lines, continually impressed by the man's talent for writing believable, engaging conversation.
September 13, 2014
Este livro é uma grande chatice!
Aborreci-me a ler cinquenta páginas;
Sacrifiquei-me a ler mais cinquenta;
Mas, não consegui apreciar o estilo do autor ao desenvolver a história, através de diálogos e com um mínimo de descrições. Talvez o facto de as personagens se darem a conhecer pelas "falas", sem intervenção do narrador, me tenha impedido de as conhecer e, consequentemente, não me tenham despertado qualquer interesse ou simpatia para continuar no seu "convívio"; apenas aborrecimento e vontade de fugir...
Aborreci-me a ler cinquenta páginas;
Sacrifiquei-me a ler mais cinquenta;
Mas, não consegui apreciar o estilo do autor ao desenvolver a história, através de diálogos e com um mínimo de descrições. Talvez o facto de as personagens se darem a conhecer pelas "falas", sem intervenção do narrador, me tenha impedido de as conhecer e, consequentemente, não me tenham despertado qualquer interesse ou simpatia para continuar no seu "convívio"; apenas aborrecimento e vontade de fugir...
September 15, 2007
I love Elmore Leonard's unsavory characters who never get to steal much at all but take it all in good cheer. This is most interesting, being partly set in Rwanda where amoral Terry acts as a priest during the Civil War(and all the sensleless killings do bother him) but not quite enough that when he returns to American soil and meets a lovely girl scammer, he doesn't hatch a plan to raise money for those orphans and keep it for himself. It all works out to the reader's satisfaction.
March 1, 2016
My second Elmore Leonard. Pagan Babies is better than Cuba Libre. Plot more plausible, better character development. Acceptable commuter reading.
October 7, 2018
3.5. Fun but not great. Took me only half a day to read tho!
March 28, 2019
Another good book by crime writer Elmore Leonard. ‘Pagan Babies’ is an entertaining short novel about cons tricking other cons, and everybody is thinking they are two steps ahead of the others. Nobody writes low-life street vernacular like Elmore Leonard.
Terry Dunn had to flee arrest in Detroit. He drove a truck full of cigarettes for friends, but the friends were selling the cigarettes without paying the taxes. Did Terry know, or is it like he said, he simply drove the truck? In any case, Terry moved to Rwanda with the take from the cigarettes when the Feds started asking questions. Terry ‘became’ a priest, while the two friends went to prison. The ‘priest’ thing seemed interesting to Terry, until the Hutus began slaughtering Tutus in his church right in front of him. For some reason, the Hutus ignored him. Terry stayed in Rwanda, drinking and ministering to a congregation that no longer existed. He had a church full of murdered bodies which he was told could not be removed. Terry would hear occasional confessions, and say Mass on Easter and Christmas sometimes when asked.
After delivering penance to a confessed murder, Terry returns to Detroit to visit with his brother and family. Terry’s brother is a lawyer and helps him clear up his troubles with the law.
Through his brother, Terry meets Debbie Dewey, recently released from prison after doing 3 years for assault. She is now trying to make it as a stand-up comic. And she is trying to get money back from an ex-boyfriend who stole all her money. Terry says he intends to raise some money and go back to Rwanda. Terry and Debbie hit it off, and they believe that together, they can get $250,000 from Debbie’s ex boyfriend.
Debbie’s ex-boyfriend has gotten in debt to the Mob, and has no intention of giving Debbie back her money.
So the fun is reading how all these low-life characters are going to resolve their money problems and not get killed.
While not as good as ‘Get Shorty’ or ‘Bandits’ this was a fun entertaining read, and I recommend it.
Terry Dunn had to flee arrest in Detroit. He drove a truck full of cigarettes for friends, but the friends were selling the cigarettes without paying the taxes. Did Terry know, or is it like he said, he simply drove the truck? In any case, Terry moved to Rwanda with the take from the cigarettes when the Feds started asking questions. Terry ‘became’ a priest, while the two friends went to prison. The ‘priest’ thing seemed interesting to Terry, until the Hutus began slaughtering Tutus in his church right in front of him. For some reason, the Hutus ignored him. Terry stayed in Rwanda, drinking and ministering to a congregation that no longer existed. He had a church full of murdered bodies which he was told could not be removed. Terry would hear occasional confessions, and say Mass on Easter and Christmas sometimes when asked.
After delivering penance to a confessed murder, Terry returns to Detroit to visit with his brother and family. Terry’s brother is a lawyer and helps him clear up his troubles with the law.
Through his brother, Terry meets Debbie Dewey, recently released from prison after doing 3 years for assault. She is now trying to make it as a stand-up comic. And she is trying to get money back from an ex-boyfriend who stole all her money. Terry says he intends to raise some money and go back to Rwanda. Terry and Debbie hit it off, and they believe that together, they can get $250,000 from Debbie’s ex boyfriend.
Debbie’s ex-boyfriend has gotten in debt to the Mob, and has no intention of giving Debbie back her money.
So the fun is reading how all these low-life characters are going to resolve their money problems and not get killed.
While not as good as ‘Get Shorty’ or ‘Bandits’ this was a fun entertaining read, and I recommend it.
August 3, 2018
Another quirky story from the author of “Get Shorty” and “Last Stand at Saber River” (see my review). This one is a sort-of caper tale, involving Father Terry Dunn, who is a missionary in Rwanda (he was inspired to go there by his priest uncle), where he lives with his girlfriend, a local named Chantelle. Turns out he went to Rwanda to escape the IRS, but that’s a fun part of the story I won’t reveal. This is in a time not long after the genocide of a number of his parishioners in a small town, by Hutu rebels. There are some quite gruesome scenes, which appear to give Terry PTSD, and from which he exacts revenge. However, he also vows to help the children orphaned by the genocide (the “Pagan Babies” of the title) and travels to Detroit, his home town, to raise money to do so. He stays with the family of his brother Fran, an attorney. Fran has as a client, Debbie Dewey, an aspiring standup comedian who has been beset with legal troubles from running her abusive ex-husband Randy over with her car. See, the usual way to raise money for these causes is to schmooze with church congregations and business leaders, an exhausting and difficult process. Terry and Debbie join forces for an alternate, namely to exact money from the local Mafia, through Randy, who has fallen in with them. The ensuing triple-crosses and merry mixups make for a very entertaining rest of the story, which you’ll have to read for yourself, but I’d certainly recommend it. Very “Elmore Leonard,” four stars.
September 9, 2018
The book opens in a Rwandan village five years after the genocide in which tens of thousands of Tutsis were slaughtered by their Hutu neighbors, many with feet and arms hiked off by machetes. Terry Dunn is a priest—or is he, really?—who witnesses the murders of 47 men, women, and children who had sought refuge in his church.
Authorities have still not allowed the bodies to be removed, they rotted and were scattered and eaten by dogs and scavengers where they lay, still inside the church, now skeletons and fragments with scraps of cloth. “Father” Dunn has spent a lot of these past five years sitting in a lawn chair at his small house near the church, wearing rock band t shirts and drinking Johnny Walker Red, occasionally hearing confessions.
Most of the book takes place in Detroit, where Dunn is from and to which he returns when his mother dies, becoming involved with various characters, crooks, and schemes surrounding fake fund raising for the pagan babies of Rwanda. It’s Elmore Leonard, right?
His last act before leaving Rwanda is to go to the filthy, stinking banana beer house in the village, where 4 of the Hutus who had committed the murders and are now bragging it’s going to happen again. He calmly shoots each of them dead as they are trying to get up from the table—Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Then, classic Elmore Leonard (I love the man): with the deafening sounds of the shots still ringing in the cramped cement block room, Dunn makes the sign of the cross with his extended arm still holding the 9mm, then says, “Burn in hell, motherfuckers.”
Read Elmore Leonard! You’ll be glad you did.
Authorities have still not allowed the bodies to be removed, they rotted and were scattered and eaten by dogs and scavengers where they lay, still inside the church, now skeletons and fragments with scraps of cloth. “Father” Dunn has spent a lot of these past five years sitting in a lawn chair at his small house near the church, wearing rock band t shirts and drinking Johnny Walker Red, occasionally hearing confessions.
Most of the book takes place in Detroit, where Dunn is from and to which he returns when his mother dies, becoming involved with various characters, crooks, and schemes surrounding fake fund raising for the pagan babies of Rwanda. It’s Elmore Leonard, right?
His last act before leaving Rwanda is to go to the filthy, stinking banana beer house in the village, where 4 of the Hutus who had committed the murders and are now bragging it’s going to happen again. He calmly shoots each of them dead as they are trying to get up from the table—Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Then, classic Elmore Leonard (I love the man): with the deafening sounds of the shots still ringing in the cramped cement block room, Dunn makes the sign of the cross with his extended arm still holding the 9mm, then says, “Burn in hell, motherfuckers.”
Read Elmore Leonard! You’ll be glad you did.
June 12, 2020
A very funny shaggy dog crime story set in Rwanda and Detroit. Elmore Leonard's Pagan Babies is about a Catholic priest who isn't really a priest who returns to his native Detroit with the stated intention of raising funds for Rwandan orphans, or is it really for himself or his ex-con accomplice Debbie Dewey, who has just gotten out of stir for doing a deliberate hit and run on her swinish ex-husband.
The funniest thing about this book is the depiction of Detroit mafiosi and "made men" who have low double-digit IQs and the strange interactions between "Father Terry Dunn," Debbie Dewey, and the mob.
The funniest thing about this book is the depiction of Detroit mafiosi and "made men" who have low double-digit IQs and the strange interactions between "Father Terry Dunn," Debbie Dewey, and the mob.
December 28, 2019
This is my first Elmore Leonard book, so I came to it without expectations or comparisons to his other work. All of the characters came with the complexity that life imbues "real" humans with--a dash of goodness, but mostly self-serving and conniving. The most loyal act in the story came from a minor character named Johnny who refunded money to a hit man and tried to save his friend with a warning. The strength of this book was definitely the characters and dialogue. Leonard gave the Mutt some of the best lines, but there were a couple of scenes where Debbie and the mob boss rocked.
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