PAGAN BABIES. - Softcover

Leonard, Elmore.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 067089396X ISBN 13: 9780670893966

Publisher: DELACORTE PRESS., 2000

Synopsis

In Leonard's 35th novel, Father Terry Dunn, a professional crook turned nominal priest, returns to Detroit after a brief exile in Rwanda and teams up with tough girl Debbie Dewey. Debbie is an ex-con just out of prison for running over her boyfriend with a Ford Escort; she's also a former employee of Terry's lawyer brother, Francis. Together, Terry and Debbie devise a moneymaking scam that involves staging a relief fund for Rwandan babies. It almost succeeds--until a Detroit mobster, a hit man, and Francis's unexpectedly astute wife get in the way.

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Review:

After 30-odd novels, one might think that Elmore Leonard has nothing left to prove. But Pagan Babies, a novel filled with his signatures (tight plotting, scathing wit, and that grittily realistic dialogue), shows once again why he sets the standard against which other crime novels are measured. In fact, Leonard has raised the bar. How many authors would dare use the Rwandan genocide as backdrop for a story that moves gaily between romantic comedy and a massive, labyrinthine con? More to the point, how many of them would pull it off?

Father Terry Dunn doesn't have qualms about substituting punishment for penance. If that means killing four Hutu murderers who slaughtered his Tutsi congregation, so be it. Being an instrument of divine wrath has certain disadvantages, however, so Dunn breaks camp and heads for Detroit, where he's welcomed by family, a five-year-old federal indictment for tax fraud, and a fast-talking fireball named Debbie Dewey. Fresh from a stint in prison for assaulting her former fiancé, Randy, with a Ford Escort, Debbie is out for revenge:

"I still can't believe I fell for it. He tells me he's retired from Merrill Lynch, one of their top traders, and I believed him. Did I check? No, not till it was too late. But you know what did me in, besides the hair and the tan? Greed. He said if I had a savings account that wasn't doing much and would like to put it to work... He shows me his phony portfolio, stock worth millions, and like a dummy I said, 'Well, I've got fifty grand not doing too much.' I signed it over and that's the last I saw of my money."

It's only a matter of time before Debbie's desire for cold, hard cash and Dunn's fundraising for Rwandan orphans join forces in a carefully plotted financial assault on Randy's benefactor, Tony Amilia, who just happens to be the last of the old-school Detroit Mafia. Throw in a couple of hit men to whom loyalty is a foreign word, and you've got vintage Leonard: a fast-paced, roller-coaster ride of a novel where deceiver and deceived are gloriously shifty signifiers. --Kelly Flynn

From the Publisher:

5 1.5-hour cassettes

About this edition

• Publisher: DELACORTE PRESS.
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 067089396X
• ISBN 13: 9780670893966
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1