Elmore Leonard brings his trademark wit and inimitable style to this twisting, gripping-and sometimes playful-tale of modern-day piracy
Dara Barr, documentary filmmaker, is at the top of her game. She’s covered Bosnian women, Neo-Nazis, and post-Katrina New Orleans (for which she won an Oscar), but now she’s looking for an even bigger challenge. So she and her right-hand-man-a six-foot-six, 72-year-old, African-American man named Xavier-head to Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa, to tackle modern-day pirates. Once they start filming, though, they find a whole lot more than they bargained for.
They quickly learn that almost nobody in Djibouti is what he seems. A whole mob of colorful characters patrols the surrounding seas, including a pirate commander who’s more like Robin Hood than Captain Hook; a cultured diplomat with dubious connections; a rich playboy who knows more than he lets on; and an American-born terrorist with lofty ambitions. But then there’s the recently hijacked LNG (liquid natural gas) tanker: just the thing an aspiring terrorist is looking for to blow up something big. What Dara and Xavier don’t know, though, is who’s going to be the one to get the prize and what they’re going to do for it.
Elmore Leonard wrote more than forty books during his long career, including the bestsellers Raylan, Tishomingo Blues, Be Cool, Get Shorty, and Rum Punch, as well as the acclaimed collection When the Women Come Out to Dance, which was a New York Times Notable Book. Many of his books have been made into movies, including Get Shorty and Out of Sight. The short story "Fire in the Hole," and three books, including Raylan, were the basis for the FX hit show Justified. Leonard received the Lifetime Achievement Award from PEN USA and the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America. He died in 2013.
