Pagan Babies

By: Elmore Leonard

Narrated by: Ron McLarty

Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins

Publisher's summary

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-shirt-wearing 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.

©2000 Elmore Leonard, Inc. (P)2000 Recorded Books Inc.

Argh, the reader's idea of a woman's voice

I love this book, but I struggled to get through this audio version. The narrator's basic voice is pleasing, with good timbre and believable interpretations for most of the charactors. However, his Debbie grated terribly on me - he sounds like he is imitating David Sedaris doing a really annoying woman. I appreciate that doing the women's voices is a difficult thing. Where was his director? He is just way too jokey, with the bizarre voice - even for Terry. The dialogue doesn't need special inflection to telegraph that it is funny. Fortunately, the book itself is so outrageous that I was able to ignore the flawed reading.

Best

His best of all the rest, and that's saying something.... should be considered a great American novel and studied in college and by writers.