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Djibouti

by Elmore Leonard

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6404836,054 (2.85)20
In a modern-day pirate story, ambitious documentary filmmaker Dara Barr and her right-hand man, Xavier LeBo, a seventy-two-year-old African American seafarer, get more than they bargained for on the Horn of Africa.
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Showing 1-5 of 44 (next | show all)
I give up. I'm barely halfway through the audiobook and I'm not going to finish. I probably gave this more of a chance than it deserved, just because it was Elmore Leonard. It had to get better, right?

Nope. After the first couple of chapters of meeting some potentially interesting characters and traveling to an interesting place, all of the interesting departed the story. All that remained was a confusing mush of jumping back and forth in time between boring dialog (not typical of Leonard) about past events, those actual past events, and some current, so-called, action. Viewpoints are jumbled together. Voices are indistinct and many seem too Western. Even the reader had a hard time making it clear who was speaking.

But that all didn't matter much because I stopped caring about the characters long ago. Moving on... ( )
  zot79 | Aug 20, 2023 |
I never thought I would be glad when an Elmore Leonard book finally ended, but "Djibouti" was hard to get through. Unintersting (to me) plot and characters, either not well defined OR I just didn't care for the characters. ( )
  bjkelley | Sep 15, 2022 |
i really don’t like the framing where all of the action happens off page and then is relayed to us by two people talking about it. luckily that’s only in the beginning and it gets better after that. also the ending was not great. ( )
  austinburns | Dec 16, 2021 |
“Djibouti” (2010), written by Elmore Leonard when he was in his mid-80s near the end of a long and productive life (he died in 2013), may not be his most compelling novel, yet it is still a marvel. Leonard always carefully researched his novels, and he seems to know Djibouti as well as he knows Detroit, Miami Beach and Hollywood in so many other books. This story is about a documentary filmmaker in Djibouti, and it has the realism of a good documentary film with the pace and tension of a thriller.

Dara Barr plans to make a film about the pirates preying on merchant ships around the Horn of Africa and holding them for huge ransoms. But to get the footage she needs for her film, she must get close to the action and to the pirates themselves. Yet the pirates seem almost tame in comparison with some of the other characters in the novel.

There's Harry, for instance, a wealthy American auditioning Helene to become his next wife. His objective, other than Helene, heavy drinking and shooting guns, is to blow up a ship laden with liquified natural gas just to see what happens.

Then there's James Russell, an American who changed his name to Jama Raisuli and became a terrorist because he likes killing people. Now he's out to kill anyone who knows his real name, including Dara. Sometimes he tells people his name just to have an excuse to kill them. And he, too, wants to blow up that ship just for the fun of it.

This is wild stuff, sometimes confusing, told by Leonard in brief and vivid scenes. sort of like the cuts in a film. ( )
  hardlyhardy | Mar 3, 2021 |
If you are new to Elmore Leonard's work, please don't begin with this one. You may not read another and that would be unfortunate. ( )
  MicheleBW | Jun 20, 2020 |
Showing 1-5 of 44 (next | show all)
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Xavier watched two Legionnaires stroll out from the terminal to wait for their flight: dude soldiers in round white kepis straight on their heads, red epaulets on their shoulders, a wide blue sash around their waist, looking like they from some old-time regiment except for the short pants and assault rifles.
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In a modern-day pirate story, ambitious documentary filmmaker Dara Barr and her right-hand man, Xavier LeBo, a seventy-two-year-old African American seafarer, get more than they bargained for on the Horn of Africa.

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