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Summary: Reading can be this fun?
Review: Most the fiction I read was inspired by English literature courses taken in college. I'd fallen into that snobbish and prejudiced state of mind that if a work doesn't aim towards some noble cause then it simply isn't worth the paper it was printed on. So, when my girlfriend gave me this book as a Christmas gift, I was hesitant to read it at all. In fact, I let the thing sit around on the coffee table for a few weeks(for purposes of appearance only) before ever reading the first line.After reading the first chapter I couldn't stop. I read the book in a single evening and am thirsty for more. And judging from the reviews of other Leonard novels, I'm of the mind now that I'll probably read them all. Pagan Babies is simply the most fun I can remember having ever had in reading. The characters are cool pop and the dialogue is amongst the most entertaining I've ever experienced outside of a Quentin Terantino film - a hip cast intertwined humorously around a unique plot. I won't go into a synopsis since the #1 Reviewer her seems to have done that rather well. But I do recommend this book - as James Ellroy once said, "Good for the whole family unless the name of your family is the f-----g Charles Manson Family."
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Summary: This is good Leonard
Review: As anyone who has read a lot of Leonard's books knows, the man is not consistent. There is good Leonard (Swag, Gold Coast, Stick) and there is bad Leonard (Cuba Libre, which I swear I couldn't force myself to finish). I always hold my breath when starting a new Leonard, since you just don't know whether you're going to get a gem or a stinker. This one is a gem. Not the best he's ever done, certainly up there with the best. And the opening sequence in Rwanda is not only as good as his own best work, it invites favorable comparison to the best of Graham Greene. Don't miss this book.
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Summary: New Noir: Flawed Femme Fatale
Review: Elmore Leonard takes the basics of a book noir and twists them around, using a machete and trick photography to fool his live-in lover in his novel, PAGAN BABIES. Most femme fatales have an ax to grind: a husband who needs killing, a fortune to gain, and some wild sex on the kitchen table to garner. Debbie Dewey has these needs, and she has the willpower to carry them out. All she needs is some dumb guy to fulfill her wishes. In Terry Dunn she thinks she has her intellectually challenged male. Problem is: she's wrong. Terry's not stupid. Her final plight is a real joy to us men who have watched our species canniballized in movies like BODY HEAT. What fun it is to see the tables turned on a fairly smart woman. What joy it is to see the "dumb guy" win. Thank you, Elmore Leonard!
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Summary: For your penance...
Review: This one begins in an African village with a mass murderer confessing to a priest and telling him he intends to massacre the congregation. Genocide, lives of the saints, con men, $250,000, hit men, lawyers and comedians are only some of the mix in Leonard's most recent offering. No writer can more effectively entertain us, while showing we all pay for our sins. God bless a good writer.
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Summary: Entertaining, Fast Read
Review: This is my 3rd EL book (Get Shorty and Stay Cool)and I enjoyed it. It is laugh-outloud funny in places. There has to be a Mutt book in the future. Maybe Mutt and Mary Pat meet Fr. Terry in Rhwanda. Anyway, the book is fast-paced and enjoyable throughout. You know it is a good book when you are looking for opportunities to read. This was one such book.
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Summary: Out of Africa
Review: It is a fascinating coincidence that Elmore Leonard and spymaster John Le Carre have both turned to Africa in their latest works. Leonard's protagonist in "Pagan Babies", Father Terry Dunn is still haunted by the massacre in his church during the genocide in Rwanda five years before. He consoles himself with Johnny Walker and his beautiful black housekeeper who lost an arm to a Hutu panga. One of the perpetrators of the massacre asks Fr. Terry to hear his confession and gets a stiffer penance than he counted on. Fr. Dunn returns to his native Detroit, ostensibly to raise funds for his mission. He fall in with Debby who just got out of prison for hitting her ex-boyfriend with a Ford Escort. Debby is trying to recover the $67,000 he conned from her. In typical Leonard fashion this lead to a delicious farrago of con and counter con, cross and double cross. But the image of forty-seven bodies lying hacked and shot to pieces in his church pursues Dunn and the reader like Banquo's ghost. Le Carre has choosen Kenya as the locale for "The Constant Gardener" and a multinational pharmaceutical company as the villan. The beautiful young wife of a middle-aged British foreign service officer is murdered because she is gathering information on the deadly side-effects of a new and hugely profitable treatment for multi-reistant Tuberculosis. Her husband Justin, awakened from bureaucratic lethargy, goes on a quest to retrace her steps and recover the missing information. In the process, the reader is given a short course in the ways multinational drug companies fiddle drug-testing, bribe the medical profession, and stifle dissent. The lectures are fitted into a fast-moving plot in which the grieving Justin must elude attempts by his own superiors to keep him under wraps, as well as the murderous pursuers who dogs his steps from continent to continent. Along the way Le Carre manages to skewer the foibles of the Foreign Office just as effectively as he did the British intelligence services in his Smiley books. Le Carre is more obviously on a crusade in his book than Leonard is in "Pagan Babies". "The Constant Gardener" is as darkly pessismistic as "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold". Leonard's detached style in "Pagan Babies" is cool to the point of being cold. He doesn't show his sympathies as obviously as Le Carre. One roots for both authors' protagonists to overcome the bad guys, but afterwards one feels a little guilty for liking Father Terry so much.
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Summary: Leonard at his very best!
Review: Pagan Babies is the very best Elmore Leonard book that I have ever read, and I have read a lot of his work. The characters are fleshed out, the plot is teriffic and the dialogue, as usual, is superb. There is no author writing today who writes better dialogue than Leonard. Duthc is the master. I would strongly recommend this book to anybody looking for a fun, quick read.
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Summary: Classic Leonard
Review: Detroit's own "Dutch" Leonard is back in classic form with Pagan Babies. It flows like a river - just jump in and ride the current! The characters are classic Leonard, too. Priest (or is he?) Terry Dunn is sharper than he seems, and convict/comedianne Debby may be dumber. Even the supporting characters crackle - from Terry's knowing sister-in-law and trusting brother to Debby's shark of an ex-husband. The dialogue sizzles, too. Pagan Babies doesn't suffer from some of the problems I've found in Leonard's non-Detroit stories. He seems most at home writing about Detroit and those novels are certainly his most self-assured. Being a Detroiter, I may be prejudiced (he loads the novel with specific local locations), but I loved this book!
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Summary: Elmore's Back !
Review: Elmore Leonard is my favorite author. I have read just about everything he has written from "The Big Bounce" onward. However I thought his "Shorty" stories were a bit weak. Too much Hollywood, not enough Detroit. "Pagan Babies" is a return to vintage Elmore Leonard. Plenty of oddly twisted criminals, weird thinking, and gallows humor. The contrast between the genocide in Africa and the petty materialism of the Americans was nicely done. Its great that Mr Leonard has returned to his roots. I hope that his next novels are set in Detroit and are full of the hoodlums his fans miss.
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Summary: Snappy
Review: This was my first elmore leonard book and I am very pleased that I read it. The comedic elements in this book had me cracking up, meanwhile trying to figure out what would happen in the end when everything came together. It didn't have an very shocking ending, but I was pleased with the way things turned out. Terry, the protagnist who escaped a imminent indictment to become a psuedo priest in Rwanda, is very quick witted, and once teamed up with comic on the rise recently released convict Debbie there conversations are some of the wittiest I've read in a while. My one problem with the book is that it seems that the caper is very long in the making, and all in all it doesnt take up much space in the 260 page book. I wish there were more of the actual crime, but the dialouge was fabulous. A good read.
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