Pagan Babies (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com 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 Publishers Weekly

The opening paragraph depicts a corner of hell on earth: a church in Rwanda after the recent (real-life) genocide, "a tomb where forty-seven bodies turned to leather.... " That's a grim start for a Leonard book, and the rest of this 36th novel from the old master doesn't shy from its dark promise. The world depicted here is a treacherous place, infested with diseased souls. While some of the spiritually afflicted are villains, however, some are merely scoundrels. It's to the latter that Leonard lends hopeDmost notably to two appealing felons: "Father" Terry Dunn, who ministers to the Rwanda church's surviving flock although he is on the lam and only posing as a priest, and Debbie Dewey, just released after serving three years for driving over her (now ex) husband with a Ford Escort. When Terry guns down four men responsible for the massacre in the church and flees to hometown Detroit, he meets Debbie and the two fall in lust pronto. It takes only minutes for Terry to inform Debbie, who's trying to make it as a stand-up comic telling prison jokes, that he's a sham priest, and only days for him to clue her in on his new scheme: to bilk the soft-hearted for dollars supposedly for Rwandan orphans but really for Terry's pockets. Great idea, Debbie thinks, and why not get the money from her now rich and mob-connected ex, and maybe even from mob boss Tony Amilia himself? The narrative ricochets through the ensuing caper and its gallery of players as lifelike as they are unlikely. As readers watch an erstwhile hoodlum pal of Terry's, one Johnny Pajonny, link up with a dim-witted hitman known as "Mutt," they'll know that they're standing at ground-zero Leonard, surrounded by some of the sweetest prose between covers this year and caught up in a crime thriller that takes admirable chancesDaesthetically and morally. Film rights sold to Universal and Danny DeVito's production company, Jersey Films.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Delacorte Press; First Edition edition (September 5, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385333927
• ISBN-13: 978-0385333924
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (70 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,536,561 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Elmore Leonard just can't miss, January 23, 2005

By	Peggy Vincent "author and reader" (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Pagan Babies (Mass Market Paperback)

Elmore Leonard just keeps going and going and going. I guess he never runs out of insane situations to write about, quirky protagonists, nefarious bad guys and quick-witted not-quite-so-bad guys, conniving (or totally innocent - - but rarely) beautiful women, stellar dialogue, twisted plots...
I dunno, but I'll read anything he writes cuz I know I'm going to be royally entertained.
Pagan Babies concerns Terry, a guy on the lam from the IRS, who hies himself off to Rwanda to stay with his priest/uncle, and while there he witnesses the genocide. Leonard downplays the grisly, horrific details of this, but we can tell it has changed Terry in some fundamental way. When his uncle dies, he sort of assumes the priest alb and carries on in his stead for something like 5 yrs, hearing confessions, giving penance, and occasionally even saying Mass.
He comes back to the states, still playing the priest, and meets up with Debbie Dewey, the usual lovely you'll find in Leonard's books, only this one just got out of jail for assaulting her ex with a Ford Escort and wants to be a stand-up comic focusing on prison humor. Hello? I mean, you can't make this stuff up! But Elmore Leonard does.
They team up to pull of a scam, and things of course go awry - and that's all I'm going to tell you.
Read it. It's a hoot.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Sound Familiar?, September 24, 2000

By	Maurice Williams "mauricewms" (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

An all right read. Fast and easy but not as entertaining as some of Leonard's earlier work. In Pagan Babies, Leonard tells the story of a criminal priest and his dealings with the mob element of Detroit. From Africa to Detroit, the priest conjures up scheme after scheme, only to have them get tripped up by the mob element he's gotten in bed with. Leonard could have written this one in his sleep as the plot twists were predictable, uncreative and out right dull. The characters could have been lifted from any of his previous novels and at times it seems they were. Perhaps a movie version (and this reads like a screenplay) of this novel would make a better showing.

25 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Leonard at top form, September 13, 2000

By	Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews (#1 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Father Terry Dunn knows it is time to leave the Rwanda massacre. His church contains forty-seven corpses turning to "leather." Although Terry is hiding as a priest, he cannot take any more of the killing fields. He kills several of the culprits but flees home to Detroit. He originally fled to avoid jail time.

Debbie Dewey has just left prison after three years for trying to run over her former husband with a car. Debbie wants to become a stand-up comic until she meets Terry still masquerading as a priest. They are immediately attracted to one another and he brings her into his current con, bilking wealthy patrons in a save the Rwandan children cause which is another name for his wallet. She ups the ante by persuading him that her ex and the mob boss he is tied to is the perfect pigeon.

PAGAN BABIES is more than vintage Leonard. This novel is classic Leonard wildly destroying moral barriers. The story line is entertaining, never eases up, and contains Mr. Leonard's graphic but picturesque prose that shows he is quite a talent. The characters are typical of Mr. Leonard's novel as they run the full spectrum of sleaze, in other words likable to detestable parasites. This tale is superb reading for those fans that enjoy something different along the lines of a fabulously written crime drama heavily spiced with the absurd.