''Pagan Babies'' is a 2000

crime In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definitions of", in Ca ...

novel written by Elmore Leonard. He first used Pagan Babies as the name of a rock band in his 1981 novel Split Images.

Plot summary

The novel begins in Rwanda. The protagonist is a priest named Terry Dunn. It is a few years after the

genocide Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the Lat ...

of the

Tutsis The Tutsi (), or Abatutsi (), are an ethnic group of the African Great Lakes region. They are a Bantu-speaking ethnic group and the second largest of three main ethnic groups in Rwanda and Burundi (the other two being the largest Bantu ethnic ...

by the

Hutus The Hutu (), also known as the Abahutu, are a Bantu ethnic or social group which is native to the African Great Lakes region. They mainly live in Rwanda, Burundi and the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, where they form one of the p ...

. Father Terry lives in Rwanda with his girlfriend Chantelle. He doesn't have qualms about substituting punishment for penance. If that means killing four Hutu murderers who slaughtered his Tutsi congregation, so be it. After being an instrument of divine wrath, Dunn breaks camp and heads for

Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at t ...

. He wants to raise money for 'Pagan Babies' — the children orphaned during the genocide. Dunn's brother Fran specializes in lawsuits for personal injuries. He is helping Debbie, a woman who spent three years in jail for deliberately hitting her ex-husband Randy with a Ford Escort. Debbie is trying to have a career as a comedian. In the meantime we learn more about Terry's past and his problems with the

IRS The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the revenue service for the United States federal government, which is responsible for collecting U.S. federal taxes and administering the Internal Revenue Code, the main body of the federal statutory tax ...

, which was the reason for his fleeing to Rwanda to help his uncle. Debbie's ex-husband Randy now owns a restaurant and is involved with some of the same gangsters that Terry once knew. Debbie and Terry begin a relationship. Randy stole sixty-seven thousand dollars from Debbie and now it's only a matter of time before Debbie's desire for cold, hard cash and Terry's fundraising for Rwandan orphans join forces in a carefully plotted financial assault on Randy. They want to receive a donation of 250,000 dollars from Tony Amilia, the local wise guy, for the 'Pagan Babies'. In Randy's restaurant all of the local wise guys, hit men, and scam artists twist and twirl around each other for the money and for their lives.

Characters in ''Pagan Babies''

*Fr. Terry Dunn – Father *Fran Dunn – Terry's brother *Mary Pat – Fran's wife *Chantelle – Terry's Rwandan girlfriend *Laurent Kamweya – RPA officer *Tony Amilia – local wise guy *Johnny Pajonny – Terry's former crime partner *Vincent Moraco – Detroit wise guy *Debbie Dewey – ex-con and Terry's girlfriend *Randy Agley – Debbie's ex-husband *Searcy J Bragg Jr aka "The Mutt" – hit man

External links

''Pagan Babies''
at Elmore Leonard.com {{Elmore Leonard 2000 American novels Neo-noir novels Novels by Elmore Leonard Novels set in Rwanda Novels set in Detroit Books with cover art by Chip Kidd