Djibouti Book

Humanity has struggled with a lot of problems over the course of history. Most of these are issues that we continue to deal with like war, poverty, disease, discrimination, Sarah Palin, etc. It's rare that we as a species get a 'win' and are able to check something off our To-Do List once and for all, but it does happen. For example, it took a while but it seems like that pesky smallpox issue is under control.

So when the news was dominated by reports of attacks by Somalian pirates, it really pissed me off. Seriously? Freaking pirates? I thought that was one issue that got settled a long time ago. What's next? Do I have to worry that Spanish conquistadors are going to start looting their way through North America looking for gold? Should we be concerned about the resurrection of the old rum-slaves-sugar triangle trade? We don't have enough to worry about, goddamn pirates gotta make a comeback??

Oh, well. At least it gave Elmore Leonard a topic for a book. Unfortunately, the results are mixed.

Dara Barr is a documentary filmmaker fresh off an Oscar win, and she's gone to Djibouti with her assistant Xavier LeBo to get footage of the Somalia pirates in action. In typical Leonard fashion, Dara and Xavier meet a colorful cast of characters, all with their own agendas. Idris is getting rich off piracy, and he's got a charming but shady colleague called Henry. Billy is a rich Texan sailing the area on his yacht with his companion Helene and an elephant gun, and he thinks that a recently captured tanker filled with liquefied natural gas is involved in an terrorist plot. The two Al-Qaeda operatives on the ship, including a murderous American born ex-convict, seem to confirm Billy's suspicions.

Leonard's characters usually see themselves and each other in terms of an on-going story. A Leonard book usually has characters relating events to each other and trying to frame the story to make themselves look cool, and they tend to think in pop culture terms. Get Shorty is a prime example with the main character using the events that are happening as his on-going pitch for a movie.

In Djibouti, Leonard uses a different technique. The book takes a jump in time forward to a point where Dara and Xavier are reviewing footage they shot at sea. As they're editing and trying to craft a narrative, they're re-telling the story to each other and trying to make a coherent plot out of it. That continues throughout the book as Dara struggles to put a theme and an ending to her movie. That was a new way for Leonard to frame the story, and it's one of the more interesting aspects of the book.

But he leaves that behind to launch into a pretty typical Elmore Leonard plot, it's just happening in Africa instead of Florida or Detroit this time. The book consists almost entirely of dialogue, with characters describing the area and events to each other. With an exotic locale, Leonard might have been better served to do a little more descriptive writing.

Plus, the plot gets a little more convoluted and confusing. When the main villain finally emerges from the cast, I had to go back and try to find his introduction to the narrative because I couldn't figure out when the others had met him. Dara didn't grab me as a main character, either. Leonard has done some strong female protagonists before like Karen Sisco and Jackie Brown, but Dara just didn't have the same zing.

Nice to see Leonard playing with his structure a bit, but it was a little sloppy and confusing. I give him credit for leaving his writing comfort zone to try something a little off-beat.