Amis:Among the differences from your earlier books, this book is more discursive, less dialogue-driven and, till the end, less action-driven. Toward the end, you get a familiar Leonard scenario where there’s a chunk of money sitting around, and various people are after it and you’re pretty confident that it’s going to go to the least-undeserving people present. And it’s not hard-bitten; it’s a much more romantic book than we’re used to from you. Could your Westerns have had such romance?
Leonard:No. In my Westerns there was little romance except in Valdez Is Coming, which is my favorite of the Westerns. No, I just wanted to make this a romantic adventure story.
Amis:And there’s a kind of political romanticism, too. You’ve always sided with the underdog, imaginatively; one can sense that. And who could be more of an underdog than a criminal? And your criminals have always been rather implausibly likable and gentle creatures. What is your view about crime in America?
Leonard:I don’t have a view about crime in America. There isn’t anything I can say that would be interesting at all. When I’m fashioning my bad guys, though (and sometimes a good guy has had a criminal past and then he can go either way; to me, he’s the best kind of character to have), I don’t think of them as bad guys. I just think of them as, for the most part, normal people who get up in the morning and they wonder what they’re going to have for breakfast, and they sneeze, and they wonder if they should call their mother, and then they rob a bank. Because that’s the way they are. Except for real hard-core guys.
Amis:The really bad guys.
Leonard:Yeah, the really bad guys. . . .
Amis:Before we end, I’d just like to ask you about why you keep writing. I just read my father’s collected letters, which are going to be published in a year or two. It was with some dread that I realized that the writer’s life never pauses. You can never sit back and rest on what you’ve done. You are driven on remorselessly by something, whether it’s dedication or desire to defeat time. What is it that drives you? Is it just pure enjoyment that makes you settle down every morning to carry out this other life that you live?
Leonard:It’s the most satisfying thing I can imagine doing. To write that scene and then read it and it works. I love the sound of it. There’s nothing better than that. The notoriety that comes later doesn’t compare to the doing of it. I’ve been doing it for almost forty-seven years, and I’m still trying to make it better. Even though I know my limitations; I know what I can’t do. I know that if I tried to write, say, as an omniscient author, it would be so mediocre. You can do more forms of writing than I can, including essays. My essay would sound, at best, like a college paper.
Amis:Well, why isn’t there a Martin Amis Day? Because January 16, 1998, was Elmore Leonard Day in the state of Michigan, and it seems that here, in Los Angeles, it’s been Elmore Leonard Day for the last decade. [Laughter]
[Applause]
Editor’s note: Martin Amis is the author of many novels — including Money: A Suicide Note; London Fields; and Night Train — and many works of nonfiction, including a collection of essays and criticism, The War Against Cliché, in which may be found other interesting observations on the work of Elmore Leonard.
About the Author
* * *
Elmore Leonard has written more than three dozen books during his highly successful writing career, including the national bestsellers Tishomingo Blues, Pagan Babies, and Be Cool. Many of his novels have been made into movies, including Get Shorty, Out of Sight, Valdez Is Coming, and Rum Punch (as Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown). He has been named Grand Master by Mystery Writers of America and lives in Bloomfield Village, Michigan, with his wife.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
* * *
“AMERICA’S GREATEST CRIME WRITER.”
Newsweek
Father Terry Dunn thought he’d seen everything on the mean streets of Detroit, but that was before he went on a little retreat to Rwanda to evade a tax-fraud indictment. Now the whiskey-drinking, Nine Inch Nails T-shirtwearing padre is back trying to hustle up a score to help the little orphans of Rwanda. But the fund-raising gets complicated when a former tattletale cohort pops up on Terry’s tail. And then there’s the lovely Debbie Dewey. A freshly sprung ex-con turned stand-up comic, Debbie needs some fast cash, too, to settle an old score. Now they’re in together for a bigger payoff than either could finagle alone. After all, it makes sense . . . unless Father Terry is working a con of his own.
“The King Daddy of crime fiction—hip, funny, tough division—knocks another one out of the park.”
Seattle Times
“Criminally funny . . . a sinfully good read. . . . Don’t wait for the movie. Get the book now.”
New Orleans Times-Picayune
“Satisfying . . . resoundingly genuine, and refreshingly unexpected.”
Buffalo News
THE CRITICS CAN’T RAVE ENOUGH ABOUT
PAGAN BABIES!
“At the top of his game. . . . A crisp and searingly funny book involving a cast of characters only Leonard could supply. . . . The style is cool and knowing, the dialogue spare and telling, the effect usually wonderful and astonishing.”
San Francisco Chronicle
“Pure reading pleasure.”
Playboy
“Some of the sweetest prose between covers this year . . . a crime thriller that takes admirable chances.”
Publishers Weekly
“Riotous.”
Kirkus Reviews (*Starred Review*)
“Pure gold.”
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
“A sharp exploration of loyalty and disloyalty, trust and betrayal.”
New York Times
“Catches fire.”
People
“He’ll have you hooked before you know what’s happened to you.”
Daily Oklahoman
“It’s tough to imagine a crime novel that blends the carnage of war-torn Rwanda with Detroit mobsters, an ex-con comedian and a priest who doesn’t take his vows too seriously. Elmore Leonard pulls it off. . . . Mr. Leonard hasn’t lost any steam.”
Providence Journal
“[Proves] once again that Leonard . . . stands head and shoulders above the competition.”
San Diego Union-Tribune
“The work of an old master showing once again how it is done. And making it look easy. . . . An astonishing, gravity-defying display. . . . Leonard is at the top of his game, exploiting his own patented conventions with new shadings. Leonard still has the daring and energy to match, and sometimes to surpass, his previous achievements.”
Raleigh News & Observer
“A book whose ambitions should expand his fans’ ideas of what a Leonard novel can be.”
Des Moines Register
“Enjoyable. . . . Leonard keeps the pace fast and the dialogue sharp and funny.”
Boston Herald
“Classic Leonard. It’s witty, it’s real and it’s original.”
Grand Rapids Press
“Elmore Leonard’s engaging mix of mordant humor, nervous tension, mayhem and poignancy has been imitated by many, but the author remains the original. And he’s even getting better.”
Wall Street Journal
“Like Shakespeare, Leonard is generous with characters, even minor ones. . . . Most chapters end on a twist, and only a gifted psychic will be able to predict the end of this novel.”
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
“America’s coolest writer.”
Columbus Dispatch
“A winner . . . truly unique.”
San Francisco Examiner
“Some of his best, most effortlessly detailed writing, Leonard strikes a perfect tone in balancing pulp fiction and literature, satire and realism.”
Chicago Sun-Times
“Leonard transposes the conventions of popular fiction as adroitly as he rattles off his signature dialogue-to-die-for.”
Booklist
“Sleek and effortlessly entertaining.”
Newark Star Ledger
“Nobody does it better.”
Detroit News
“This man can write. . . . Fast-moving, smoothly orchestrated. . . . Just when you think you’ve figured it out, you find you’re wrong.”
Deseret News
“Graceful prose, crackling dialogue and an assortment of unusual characters.”
San Antonio Express-News
“Leonard has . . . a special ability to conceive stories that seem effortlessly real without requiring even the slightest suspension of disbelief. And he’s done it so consistently that readers have come to count on it.”
Boston Globe
“Elmore Leonard is as good as ever. . . . If Pagan Babies does not surprise you at least once, you probably are not paying close enough attention.”
Omaha World-Herald
“The novel pleases, cajoles and thrills.”
Memphis Commercial Appeal
“Moves at a breakneck pace. . . . Elmore Leonard does not disappoint.”
Rocky Mountain News
Books by Elmore Leonard
The Bounty Hunters
The Law at Randado
Escape from Five Shadows
Last Stand at Saber River
Hombre
The Big Bounce
The Moonshine War
Valdez Is Coming
Forty Lashes Less One
Mr. Majestyk
52 Pickup
Swag
Unknown Man #89
The Hunted
The Switch
Gunsights
Gold Coast
City Primeval
Split Images
Cat Chaster
Stick
LaBrava
Glitz
Bandits
Touch
Freaky Deaky
Killshot
Get Shorty
Maximum Bob
Rum Punch
Pronto
Riding the Rap
Out of Sight
Cuba Libre
The Tonto Woman and Other Western Stories
Be Cool
Pagan Babies
Copyright
Cover photographs © by Sergio Stakhnyk & Lim Yong Hian/Shutterstock Images
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
This book was originally published in hardcover by Delacort Press, a division of Random House, Inc.
PAGAN BABIES. Copyright © 2000 by Elmore Leonard, Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © NOVEMBER 2002 ISBN: 9780061834226
Version 01112013
First HarperTorch paperback printing: January 2002
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