Father Terry Dunn returns to Detroit from Rwanda where he had a church and where he witnessed the genocide of Tutsis by Hutus. He hooks up with an ex-con who used to be a private investigator for his lawyer-brother, and who wants revenge for being wronged by her ex-boyfriend.
Elmore Leonard's Pagan Babies
is unlike his usual work in that I finished it and was disappointed. His main character was more than the usual cocky asshole protagonist that appears in all of his books. This character struck me a a genuinely bad person, not just a guy playing the angles. Maybe it was the whole bizarre Rwanda aspect to the story, or, perhaps, in part, it was how the relationship between Terry Dunn and Debbie worked out that left the bad taste in my mouth, but mostly it was Dunn himself. Being a cynic myself, I like that Leonard's books don't have the usual morals. The fact that the heroes are borderline sociopaths makes for unexpected twists, and there are many in this book, just nobody to like.
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