Moonlight Mile

Jenclair wins a copy of this book!
Congratulations!

Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane
Mystery/Thriller
2010 William Morrow
Finished 11/10/10
Rating: 3.5/5 (Good)
FTC Disclosure: Acquired from Shelf Awareness

I am just living to be lying by your side
But I'm just about a moonlight mile on
down the road
~ Mick Jagger/Keith Richards, "Moonlight Mile"

Angie wasn’t just my partner. She wasn’t just my best friend. And she wasn’t just my lover. She was all those things, sure, but she was far more. Ever since we made love the other night, it had begun to dawn on me that what lay between us—what in all probability had lain between us since we were children—wasn’t just special; it was sacred.

Angie was where most of me began and all of me ended.

Without her—without knowing where she was or how she was—I wasn’t merely half my usual self; I was a cipher. (from Sacred)


They’re back!!!!

It was eight years ago that I first fell in love with Kenzie and Gennaro. Immediately after finishing A Drink Before the War, I dove right into the subsequent sequels with little time between each. Darkness, Take My Hand; Sacred; Gone, Baby, Gone; and Prayers for Rain (the latter of which I believe is Lehane’s best work in this series) kept me entertained and I was heartbroken as I read the final pages, having learned that Lehane had decided to end the series.

I think Spade and Marlowe remain icons because they didn’t wear out their welcome. Would Chandler be Chandler if he'd written 18 Marlowe books? I don’t know, but I wonder. Maybe Chandler could have sustained the level of quality, but the issue is more whether I can. And I have my doubts about that. The only artsy, metaphysical aspect of my approach to writing is that I can only write about characters when they come knocking on the door and tell me to. Patrick and Angie stopped knocking after Prayers for Rain. If they come knocking again, I’ll open the door and welcome them in with open arms because, well, they paid for my house and I’m exceedingly grateful. But if they don’t, then I'll be content to let them live happily ever after without my dropping another case-from-hell in their laps. They deserve that. (Lehane, from The Drood Review interview in 2002)

Well, I guess he missed his wise-cracking characters (or they missed him!) just as much as his fans did, and I was thrilled to snag an ARC of Moonlight Mile from Shelf Awareness earlier this fall. Unfortunately, I didn’t find the book to be nearly as lyrical or suspenseful as previous books in this series. I only marked one passage, and only because Gabby sounds a little bit like our granddaughter. Nonetheless, it was fun to catch up with Patrick, Angie and Bubba, and now I’m tempted to go back and re-read the entire series.

On life’s burdens:

We came out of the dark of the tunnel into the late afternoon traffic as the girls sang and clapped their hands to the beat. Traffic was light, because it was Christmas Eve and most people had either not gone to work or had left early. The sky was purple tin. A few flakes of snow fell, but not enough to accumulate. My daughter squealed again and both Bubba and I winced. It’s not an attractive sound, that. It’s high-pitched and it enters your ear canals like hot glass. No matter how much I love my daughter, I will never love her squealing.

Or maybe I will.

Maybe I do.

Driving south on 93, I realized, once and for all, that I love the things that chafe. The things that fill me with stress so total I can’t remember when a block of it didn’t rest on top of my heart. I love what, if broken, can’t be repaired. What, if lost, can’t be replaced.

I love my burdens…

I’m a deeply flawed man who loves a deeply flawed woman and we gave birth to a beautiful child who, I fear, may never stop talking. Or squealing. My best friend is a borderline psychotic who has more sins on his ledger than whole street gangs and some governments. And yet…

Oh, yeah. Here’s the publisher’s blurb:

Amanda McCready was four years old when she vanished from a Boson apartment in 1997. Desperate pleas for help from the child’s aunt led savvy, tough-nosed investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro to take on the case. The pair risked everything to find the young girl—only to have Kenzie orchestrate her return to a neglectful mother and a broken home.

Now Amanda is sixteen—and gone again. A stellar student, brilliant but aloof, she seemed destined to escape her upbringing. Yet Amanda’s aunt is once more knocking at Kenzie’s door, fearing the worst for the little girl who has blossomed into a striking bright young woman who hasn’t been seen in two weeks.

Haunted by the past, Kenzie and Gennaro revisit the case that troubled them the most, following a twelve-year trail of secrets and lies down the darkest alleys of Boston’s gritty, blue-collar streets. Assuring themselves that this time will be different, they vow to make good on their promise to find Amanda and see that she is safe. But their determination to do the right thing holds dark implications Kenzie and Gennaro aren’t prepared for… consequences that could cost them not only Amanda’s life, but their own.

I’ll be curious to hear how others like this final installment in the Kenzie-Gennaro series. Leave me a comment, if you’re interested in my ARC. I’ll draw a name on December 13th.