PAGAN BABIES
by Elmore Leonard (BDD Audio, $25.95)
Read by Steve Buscemi, six hours, abridged

A church in genocidal Rwanda seems a chilling locale even for an Elmore Leonard novel. This particular church has 47 unburied bodies and a priest who never gives more than 10 paternosters as penance. That is, until an explosive scene sends Father Dunn fleeing home to Detroit, where the law and angry mobsters await. Already sold to Hollywood, Leonard’s 36th book boasts his usual colorful lowlifes — a sexy ex-con using her jailhouse years in a stand-up routine, the slimy ex-husband she tried to run over, and a hopeless hit man named Mutt. Actor Buscemi makes the author’s cool dialogue zing.