Book review: “Djibouti” by Elmore Leonard

The first 70 or 80 pages of the novel Djibouti moved so slowly that I began to wonder if, after more than half a century of great writing, Elmore Leonard had lost it.

He hadn’t.  But my worries weren’t unwarranted. After all, the book was published on December 12, 2010, the day after Leonard’s 85^th birthday, and less than three years before his death.

And I think that his age, in fact, did have something to do with that oh-so-sluggish opening in which Leonard introduces his characters:

• Dara Barr, a mid-thirties documentarian, and her right-hand man, the Black 72-year-old, 6’ 6” Xavier LeBo, who have come to Djibouti, a small country in the Horn of Africa (the size of New Jersey), to research piracy in the Gulf of Aden from the nearby nation of Somalia.
• Billionaire Billy Wynn and his maybe-fiancé, an auburn-hair model named Helene who is 34 but has convinced Billy she’s in her twenties and who has agreed to accompany him as his generally topless yacht crew on an around-the-world cruise that’s a test to see if he will choose her to be Mrs. Billy and who explains that, although boring, the cruise and eventual marriage is a win-win, “Billy’s almost twenty years older than I am. We marry and he ever passes away? I’d be something like the thirtieth-richest woman in America.”
• A twosome that Dara and Xavier have nicknamed the Gold Dust Twins: Ari Ahmed Sheikh Bakar, called Harry, son of an English mother and Saudi father, whose job with an international organization is to explain to and/or convince the Somali pirates to give up their buccaneering, and his colleague, Idris Mohammed, a leader of the pirates who spends a good chunk of his time in the port of Djibouti where he has a home in the French Quarter and drives a black Mercedes Benz.l.

Those are good characters with enough quirks to keep the story interesting.  However, during this first quarter of the book, very little happens on the pages of the novel.

 

Watching video

The characters meet and talk, but what action there is is watched by Dara and Xavier on their laptop screen — video that they’ve gathered in their initial research and video from news outfits and Internet sites of the pirates doing their piracy and holding huge tankers and other ships for ransom.

This opening section is something of a research project for the reader.  Leonard has done his work, and he uses this beginning to explain the situation — which, for me at least, was too much of a good thing.

And this is where I wonder if Leonard’s age may have come into play.

My suspicion is that, if he’d been younger, he would have realized that this first section was dragging, and he would have found ways to tighten it and liven it up.

The fact that he didn’t makes me think that he was tired and decided it was good enough as it was.

 

A much bigger bomb

And Djibouti is good enough — actually, eventually, a lot of fun.  That’s because, right around page 90, action starts to take place before the reader’s eyes.

That’s because onto the scene come two Al Qaeda agents:

• Qasim al Salah, an terrorist hero, called a saint, “the man who perfected the use of vehicles as improvised explosive devices.”
• Jama Raisuli, also known as Jama al Amriki, an American ex-con who found Islam in the joint and, upon his release on, coincidentally, September 11, went east to join the terrorist group and whose birth name, his tightly held secret, is James Russell, with a stress on the last syllable.

Well, they don’t actually walk onto the scene.

The Gold Dust twins open the door of a room where the two of them are being held, and, after a fairly gratuitous murder by Harry, the terrorists are whisked into SUVs for a caravan to Djibouti in hopes of getting a $6 million reward from U.S. officials.

The two were being held because they had been on board the Aphrodite, a tanker carrying liquid natural gas that is being ransomed for $25 million by the pirates.

And there is some thought by Dara and Xavier and Billy that al Qaeda may want to use the tanker as a bomb to be detonated as soon as the ship docks in a U.S. port.

In fact, that’s been the plan of the terrorists, and Qasim has a phone number he can call to set off the bomb on the tanker to turn the ship into a much bigger bomb.

 

Tension

So, around page 90, there is this sudden ratcheting up of tension having to do with whether al Qaeda will be able to use the Aphrodite in another 9/11-type attack and whether — and how — they might be stopped.

(Hint: Billy Wynn thinks his $135,000 elephant gun may be of use.)

Another source of tension is the growing flirtation between Dara and Xavier.  Dara’s a young and healthy women with a fine body, but, well, Xavier is 72, after all.

(Hint: At one point, ten bottles of Horny Goat Weed are ordered.)

 

Fireworks

Beyond this, things ratchet up because Jama Raisuli is soon walking the streets on a spree to kill anyone who knows his name is James Russell.

At first, this is because the real name is the only way for investigators to figure out who he really it.  Later, though, when basically anyone who is anyone knows that real name, he’s just killing because that’s what he does.

Let’s just say that, with the Aphrodite sitting there in the water like a fat bomb and with Dara and Xavier making eyes at each other and with James Russell stomping around with a yen to kill people, there are a lot of fireworks as the novel comes to its end.

Enough to make up for the slow beginning?  Yeah, enough.

 

Patrick T. Reardon

12.30.24