Moonlight Mile

Kenzie & Gennaro #6

by Dennis Lehane

“[Lehane has] emerged from the whodunit ghetto as a broader and more substantial talent....When it comes to keeping readers exactly where he wants them, Mr. Lehane offers a bravura demonstration of how it’s done.”
—New York Times

Moonlight Mile is the first Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro suspense novel in more than a decade from the acclaimed, New York Times bestselling master of the new noir, Dennis Lehane. An explosive tale of vengeance and redemption—the brilliant sequel to Gone, Baby, Gone—Moonlight Mile returns Lehane’s unforgettable and deeply human detective duo to the mean streets of blue collar Boston to investigate the second disappearance of Amanda McCready, now sixteen years old. After his remarkable success with Mystic River, Shutter Island, and The Given Day, the celebrated author whom the Washington Post praises as, “one of those brave new detective stylists who is not afraid of fooling around with the genre’s traditions,” returns to his roots—and the result, as always, is electrifying.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Crime, Thriller, Mystery Thriller, Detective, Suspense

419 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 2, 2010

About the author

Dennis Lehane (born Aug 4th, 1966) is an American author. He has written several novels, including the New York Times bestseller Mystic River, which was later made into an Academy Award winning film, also called Mystic River, directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, and Kevin Bacon (Lehane can be briefly seen waving from a car in the parade scene at the end of the film). The novel was a finalist for the PEN/Winship Award and won the Anthony Award and the Barry Award for Best Novel, the Massachusetts Book Award in Fiction, and France's Prix Mystere de la Critique.

Reviews

[Will Byrnes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dennis Lehane returns to the world of Boston PIs Patrick Kenzie and his partner, now wife, Angie Gennaro. He returns also to themes of parents and children that informed the five-book series Lehane produced in the 1990s. In Moonlight Mile, Patrick and Angie are themselves parents. Patrick is still working as a PI, struggling with some moral conflicts in his assignments from a prestigious law firm, while Angie is trying to find some sanity in non-life-threatening work. But when the aunt of a child he had recovered in the book Gone, Baby, Gone, turns up and asks Patrick to find her missing niece, now 16, one more time, we are back in familiar territory.

It may be 11 years since the last Kenzie-Gennaro outing, but it feels like it was only last year. The dialogue still races along, offering the occasional laugh-out-loud moment. A few characters from the earlier novels assume their usual positions, but instead of corrupt cops this time we have Mordavian gangsters. There is enough substance abuse here to light up the western world. And although most of the children here are not overtly abused, how children are treated by systems, legal and not, comes in for yet another Lehane drive-by. Those on high are offered comparable treatment. His low view of humanity overall is clear, as one does not need to have a badge or tote automatic weapons to be a really, really awful human being in this snark-noir Boston. Fast-paced, engaging, with a hero who tries to do the right thing, and more importantly thinks about what the right thing is, payload in the form of a look at some of the dark side, high and low, this is commercial Lehane on cruise control. No one will mistake Moonlight Mile for Mystic River, Lehane’s masterpiece, or The Given Day, his most ambitious work, but it will entertain, occasionally make you laugh, and shed some light into a dark corner or two.



=============================EXTRA STUFF

Links to the author’s personal, Twitter and FB pages

Other books by Lehane I have read/reviewed

The Coughlin Series
-----The Given Day
-----Live by Night
-----World Gone By

Kenzie and Gennaro
-----A Drink Before War
-----Darkness, Take My Hand
-----Sacred
-----Gone, Baby Gone
-----Prayers for Rain

Read, but not Reviewed
-----Mystic River - a masterpiece
-----Shutter Island

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

When Amanda McCready goes missing over a decade after Patrick and Angela found her the first time, the couple set off to right a past wrong. But what does the Russian mob have to do with Amanda's disappearance? And has she really been kidnapped?

Moonlight Mile was Dennis Lehane's return to Kenzie and Gennaro, or are they Kenzie and Kenzie now, after a long absence. While Patrick and Angela may have lost a step or two after their domestication, I don't think Lehane has.

Moonlight Mile starts simply enough. Amanda McCready, now sixteen, has disappeared once again, and Patrick can't stay away, bent on redemption after Gone, Baby, Gone. I missed Devin and Oscar but it was good to see Patrick, Angie, and Bubba again. Also, Gabby was a nice addition. The case had more than enough wrinkles to keep me occupied until the end. Some of the twists, like the switcheroo at the beginning, were predictable. Others not so much.

Lehane's writing continue to impress me. I suppose I'll be picking up some of his non-series books pretty soon.

I don't really have a lot more to say about this one. It was pretty typical for a Kenzie and Gennaro book, even with their young daughter Gabby involved. It seems like it will be the last one and I'd say it's a fitting swan song. I'd rather Patrick and Angela not wreck the domestic bliss they have going.

[Kemper · Rating 4 out of 5]

If Dennis Lehane would have ripped off Charles Dickens and started this novel with “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” it would have been fitting.

It’s been eleven years since Lehane seemingly left his detective series starring Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro behind to do stand-alone novels and work on HBO’s The Wire. The last decade has been both good and bad to the couple. The economic collapse has hit them hard, and Patrick has been forced to do free-lance work for a large investigation firm that has him doing the bidding of various rich asshats. But if their professional lives aren’t great, at least things are going well on the domestic front except for worrying about how they’ll pay the bills.

In the midst of their economic crisis, an old case comes back to haunt them. In Gone Baby Gone, Patrick and Angie went looking for missing four year old Amanda, and by the end of it, they faced some of the toughest decisions of their lives. Now they’re going to have to deal with the consequences of those choices.

(That’s all the summary I’m going to give, and I’d caution anyone interested in this book to not read any kind of plot synopsis of this unless you’ve read Gone Baby Gone or seen the movie. Even the book flap for Moonlight Mile gives away a big piece of that ending. You have been warned.)

It felt incredibly good to be reading a new Patrick and Angie story, and Lehane used some of the work he’s done since to build a richer and deeper story for the pair. The influence of his time on The Wire shows in that one of the biggest villains in this book is a depressed economy. Lehane makes some poignant points about financial desperation and how it impacts everyone in a variety of ways.

This backdrop also fits an aging and moodier Patrick. Twenty years as a detective have taken their toll, and he’s increasingly disgusted with all the large and small ways that people can screw each other over.

This reads as a swan song for Patrick and Angie, and it’s pretty damn good. Not perfect. I’d have liked more Angie in the story, but there are reasons she doesn’t get more of the action this time. If this is the final book, then Lehane wrote a tender and touching farewell to Patrick and Angie that gives a satisfying ending to their series.

Oh, and just in case you’re worried that it’s all social commentary and brooding about regrets, Bubba is still around. And he still gets all the best lines like, “I’ll shoot you just for being short.”

[Jason Koivu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lehane, that guy can write!

I'm climbing on to the Dennis Lehane bandwagon really late, but I am fully on board! Even though Moonlight Mile wasn't ragingly exciting, it's so well-crafted I couldn't put down this story of a Boston-area private detective who gets into new trouble because of an old case.

This PI's career is coming to an end, but he doesn't know it yet. Russians, wunderkind and drug freaks all get the poor, aging family man deeper into the shit than he realizes he's about to fall into.

Just like me! I didn't know I was getting into a series and that it was the last book! It wasn't a problem. I could tell these were people with a past, but I was never overwhelmed by my ignorance. This is the second jump-into-the-middle-of-a-Lehane-series I've done and in both cases the author does a fine job of giving enough detail to keep the reader abreast of the haps. In other words, the books are self-contained.

I could see others giving this perhaps only 3 stars. It does drag with the chit chat here and there. I don't know, perhaps I've given this an extra star because it artificially kept my interest at times due to the setting being New England-based, which is where I grew up. Name-place dropping happens often in Moonlight Mile and that didn't bother me none!

[Olga · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm glad that Kenzie is a happy family man who finally decides to quit his stressful job. As for the story itself, it seems to me, there are too many banalities, stereotypes and lame jokes.
As far as I remember, I liked several novels by D. Lehane I had read earlier much more than this one.

[Magdalena aka A Bookaholic Swede · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the end, beautiful friend
This is the end, my only friend, the end – The Doors

So here we are, the last Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro book published. And by the tone of this book, I would say that Lehane has written the last book about the couple. Yes, I know Patrick shows up in FaceOff, but that story takes place before this story and is a short story.

I found it quite suitable that the last book is a kind of continuation for Gone, Baby, Gone with Patrick and Angie once again trying to find Amanda McCready who once again is missing. It’s been twelve years since they found her and brought her back home, a right thing to do according to the law. But was it the right thing to do for Amanda? Hardly! But she is doing ok; she has great grades despite that her mother is still a worthless drunk. So where is she? Once again is it Amanda’s aunt that reaches out to Patrick and Angie to find her.

This is a good ending to the series. You can feel it reading in the book that both Patrick and Angie are sick and tired of the life they have lived. Patrick is the only one still working as a detective, Angie is studying and they are now married with a daughter. This is really the last case they work together.

The case in the book was a bit weak I think. I like it when Lehane turns everything upside down, sure surprising things happens, but not the shocking kind of surprises. More the kind that makes you go “Oh that makes sense,” not the “wtf what just happened?” I prefer Lehane when he just pulls the rug from under one's feet, several times during a book.

But it was still a good book. And even though I will miss them I think that Lehane has written a good ending to Patrick and Angie. I hope they will have a great fictional life together.

[James Thane · Rating 4 out of 5]

At the beginning of his writing career, Dennis Lehane wrote an excellent series of gritty P.I. novels set in Boston and featuring Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro, detectives who operated out of an office in a church bell tower. The 1998 entry was Gone, Baby, Gone, in which the detectives mounted a long search for a missing four-year-old girl named Amanda McCready. The girl had been kidnapped from an abusive mother and a generally miserable home environment and left in the care of a stable, middle class couple who loved Amanda and provided her with an excellent home. Once having found Amanda, Patrick and Angie disagreed about whether they should return the girl to her awful mother or leave her in the home of the people who were obviously much better prepared to care for her. Ultimately, they returned Amanda to her biological mother, but the decision to do so drove a wedge into the relationship between the two detectives.

Lehane would write one more Kenzie/Gennaro book, Prayers for Rain, published in 1999, before leaving the series to write a number of stand-alones, including Mystic River and Shutter Island. He now returns to the series with Moonlight Mile, a book that Kenzie/Gennaro fans have long awaited.

Much has changed in the eleven years that have elapsed. Patrick and Angie are now married and the parents of their own four-year-old daughter. (This gives nothing away. It's in the promotional material and is revealed in the opening of the book.) Patrick is still working as a P.I., but the cases are few and far between. Angie has gone back to school and the family is struggling financially, victims of the recession. The office in the bell tower is gone--a casualty of the Catholic church's financial crisis--and now Amanda McCready has gone missing again.

The case has haunted Patrick and Angie for twelve years and Patrick agrees to take the case and try to find Amanda for a second time. The hunt takes Patrick and Angie into a tangled world of Russian mobsters, irresponsible parents, and a young woman who is wise way beyond her years. In addition to the intellectual and physical challenges that the case poses for Patrick, he faces a number of ethical and moral dilemmas that are not easily resolved.

This is a very good book--both highly entertaining and thought-provoking. But as a long-time fan who has read this series from the very beginning, I had a couple of quibbles. First, I regret, to some extent, the fact that Lehane simply picked up the series eleven years down the road. Major changes have occurred in the lives of characters that fans of the series have come to care about. And I feel somewhat cheated by the fact that I didn't get to watch those changes as they happened. It would be as if Lawrence Block had simply skipped over the book in which Matthew Scudder stopped drinking and became sober.

My other concern is that Patrick makes choices in this book that would have been perfectly logical for a single detective in his early thirties, possessed of a strong moral code. Patrick still has a strong moral code, but I'm not sure that some of his choices are appropriate for a man with a wife and child who may well be seriously affected by those choices. He has other people to think about now, and I found myself questioning the logic of his actions at a couple of points.

Those admittedly minor reservations aside, I enjoyed this book very much and it was great to finally see Patrick and Angie back again.

[Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Moonlight Mile was sort of a “filler” read for me. I had picked it up at a library sale a while back and needed a book to zip through while I waited for my reserved e-book to arrive from the public library. Never mind that the only other story in Dennis Lehane’s Kenzie & Gennaro series that I had read was the first one, A Drink Before the War. But, never mind, I could catch up. What I found out was that everybody reading this book is catching up, even if they’ve read the entire series, because years have passed. Angie and Patrick are now married with a four-year-old daughter. Yup. Life goes on.

In this one, however, it’s sort of like “deja vu all over again”. Sort of. In Gone, Baby, Gone, P.I.s Kenzie and Gennaro track down a missing 4-year-old girl and return her to her messed up mother. Now, more than a dozen years later, Amanda McCready is missing again. Angie is a full-time mom, but when she talks Patrick into taking the case, she puts on her P.I . hat one more time. Complicating things for K & G is the fact that Angie is in school, and Patrick is being put off in his attempts to find permanent employment. Still, he relents when Angie pushes him to search for Amanda.

It was okay reading this novel out of sequence. I easily caught on to the characters. Through their banter and their thoughts, their personalities came through fairly well. Patrick still agonizes over his decision to return Amanda to her mother. We learn that Amanda has more than compensated for that by becoming a too-perfect student, a young woman whom many look up to, but not someone that anyone feels a real connection to. I had mixed feelings about this girl. I found myself wanting her to succeed, but I wondered if she was capable of any deep emotions. With the search for Amanda, Patrick encounters much, much more than he bargained for. I had visions of someone winding up in a grave, and it could very well wind up being our hero or someone near and dear to him. These are some very bad dudes!

The interactions between Patrick and Amanda are sometimes raw, sometimes entertaining, but they always felt genuine and real. I liked little Gabby. Bubba, the strong man, is a gentle giant around the child, but he is like the Incredible Hulk when it comes to the bad guys.

The plot went places I had no idea it would go. And then – surprise! It twisted. I think that gained another 1/2 star from me. The dark place got a bit brighter. Maybe it was all a bit too neat and tidy, but in a book so grim and nasty, I think it was an apt ending.

4 stars

[Perry · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Magic Has Gone, Baby, Gone


Apparently, Dennis Lehane's publisher or his publishing contract put tremendous pressure on him to write a final Kenzie and Gennaro (a sequel to the surprisingly good Gone, Baby, Gone, i.e., a follow-up on what happened to Amanda McCready, the child kidnapped and rescued in Gone Baby). Based on the premium quality of all but one of the first 5 Kenzie/Gennaro novels, a reader must logically infer that Lehane’s heart wasn't in this one, that he "phoned this in."

The novel has a paint-by-numbers feel, or seems perhaps spun by the latest story-structure software. It suffers, among other things:

--a complete absence of the mordant wit that has come to be the author's staple;
--a total eclipse of the sexual tension fulgurating between the male/female detective duo, that gave the prior novels such brio;
--a flimsy plot;
--new characters who are paraded into and out of scenes with no development; and,
--no true sense of place (Boston/the Berkshires) that was present in the prior K&G novels;


You could tell from the thin threads of plot that the entire plot line would sputter, and end up nowhere. Consider the pathetic relationship between Sophie and her idiot dad (themselves stick characters), the confusing and baseless relationship between Amanda and her counselor Dre', the expedient railroading of Dre’ to quickly dispense with the complication he presented, and a highly implausible climax in a trailer park on the Charles River.

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

The final Kenzie and Genarro book is very good, don't be afraid to read it. Be sad this is the last, but be happy that Lehane has given us a positive, life-affirming ending.

As the book starts, our beautiful Angela and Patrick are on the edge and it hurts. Lehane understands. The financial and health scraping and the fear, the anger over what the super-rich and criminal politicians have stolen from us, and it hurts almost everyone I know these days. (See my review of Borne here https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)

And I fear for the future of my fine son, and his someday children:

GREED is truly the most terrible challenge of our times, and capitalism is its tool, its means to power and more greed.

Greed is a (contagious) mental illness, an unfillable hole, a hunger that denies justice, an expression of a broken ego.

Greed consumes the earth without respite, and is a cancer on humanity. Greed destroys us and our children and their future.

Greed is death.

33% .... Patrick is right, here. The difference between their kids' world today and our parents world now is 3x greater than when we were kids. It's overwhelming.
“After my daughter was born, I’d considered buying a shotgun to ward off potential suitors fourteen or so years up the road. Now, as I listened to these girls babble and imagined Gabby one day talking with the same banality and ignorance of the English language, I thought of buying the same shotgun to blow my own f**king head off.”

87% ... This book still contains the essence of our flawed Hero Patrick, although Angela is not around much, sadly. I really miss them as a vital and dynamic team. The plot is pure Lehane, and drags us along relentlessly, and pleasurably.

The only thing that is out-of-whack here is that no 16-year-old, not one in the world, has the literacy and presence and complexity of mind that Amanda does in this book. However, that flaw does allow Lehane to continue to explore "parent-child" bonding and trauma. This theme appears in most of Lehane's books. It's perhaps his most important and personal topic, and is central to the horror of his masterpiece Mystic River.

It's terrific crime noir writing, and if you read it right and deeply, it aches.

97% ... wonderful
“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 very sad to see the end of this series. In my heart, Patrick and Angela are real.

And in the end, Patrick and Angela and Gabby, their daughter are bound tightly, solidly, safely, hopefully, and with joy. And Bubba too, the mountain presence in their lives.

[Amos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hot damn, that cat sure can write. What a totally engrossing series from start to finish. Bravo, Mr Lehane.

4 Satiated Stars

[Bee With a Book · Rating 3 out of 5]

Moonlight Mile is the final book in a series of detective/crime mystery novels that takes place in Boston. A sixteen-year-old Amanda goes missing nearly a decade after Patrick and Angela a detective duo found her for the first time, she went missing at age four. This time though it seems a bit more complicated with the Russian mob involved along with something they lost which they deem very precious.

While this book is part of a series the author does a good job at making the reader jump in without making it seem like there is any missing information or feeling ignorant about past events.

“Her forehead was unlined in the way of the recently embalmed and her smile resembled that of someone undergoing electroshock.”
― Dennis Lehane, Moonlight Mile

Lehane writes with ease which makes for a quick easy read, beautifully descriptive of the locations and characters in the book.

I have not read any of the other books in the series but it seems more like a solo detective mission than a duo. Patrick does most of the work with Angie only popping up for an appearance here and there. Suppose this was due to the couple having a child, and every parent knows finding child care is a mission in itself.

Although the book is an easy read it feels like it’s missing an edge dragging along without any real excitement until the very end of the story or so it seemed. It is still filled with lots of violence, substance abuse, and basically crappy human beings and a distinct sense that Lehane has a particularly low view of humanity.

“All the stuff our fathers took for granted as long as you worked hard, the great safety net and the fair wage and the gold watch at the end of it all?That's all gone around here, my friend.”
― Dennis Lehane, Moonlight Mile

Tough I don’t think Lehane was trying to write a commentary on society he sure makes it clear where society’s failings lie making some poignant points about corruption, financial desperation, society's general lack of community, and how it impacts everyone in diverse ways.

“I'd like to say I found a sublime beauty in it all, but I didn't. And yet. And yet, this life we'd built filled our car”
― Dennis Lehane, Moonlight Mile

The book seems like an appropriate farewell to the private detectives with a clear indication that there will be no more of their adventures to come.

[Labijose · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one seems like a real farewell to the Kenzie and Gennaro series. They both feel too old for this sh.. (Pardon my French!) Eleven years have gone by since they rescued Amanda, a kind of fix that didn’t sit well with Angie. And Amanda has gone missing again, this time to the hands of the Russian mob. But now Patrick and Angie have their own daughter. Life is much more precious to them, so, there’s a decision to make, and also family members to protect. That’s when Bubba shows again, and I am really sorry that he takes so little part in this novel, being the funniest guy of the lot.

Anyway, Lehane hasn’t lost his poetic feeling towards his main characters, and it shows. The book is full of pages with beautiful descriptions, and I’m gonna really miss Patrick, Angie and Bubba. Anyway, thanks for such a good series, Dennis!

As an observation, I strongly recommend to read “Gone, baby” before this one.

[Ms.pegasus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Patrick Kenzie soldiers on with increasing disgust with his occupation as a private detective. He now has a wife, née Angela Gennaro, and irresistably cute daughter, Gabriela, to support. Patrick and Angela partnered twelve years ago in a missing toddler case, the subject of Lehane's earlier novel, GONE, BABY, GONE. I had never read this book, but found enough backstory included in the present book to make all the necessary connections. Now, twelve years later, Bea McCready has resurfaced. She is an unwelcome ghost from the past, demanding that Patrick locate once again her missing niece Amanda.

There is a strong noirish undercurrent to this book – the recurrence of undesirable consequences arising from moral choices. Patrick recovered the missing baby in the earlier case and returned her to her mother, an alcoholic who regularly shacked up with criminal low-lifes. More recently, Patrick's investigation led to the arrest of a would-be whistleblower. As a result a huge corporation was able to continue dumping toxic pollutants across eight different states. His latest investigation enables a 25-year-old DUI perp to defraud the family of a young woman he maimed for life. It was his fourth DUI charge. Thanks to a mother who was a superior court judge and a media mogul father, the other three failed to result in significance consequences.

Despite numerous and unsubtle presentiments of danger, Angie and Patrick team up on the search to find Amanda McCready, now 16 years old. Aunt Bea had struck a nerve. How had Amanda turned out given her negligent single mother? “Hardened” and clever are the only hints they glean. The leads are strung out like a breadcrumb trail: the high school principle who claims Amanda was on an Ivy League College track; a scattering of reticent school mates who hardly knew her; her sole friend, Sophie Corliss, who also seems to have gone missing; Sophie's father Brian; Sophie's social services caseworker Andre Stiles; and Sophie's boyfriend Zippo, whom Stiles identifies as a youth named David Lighter, who is now permanently unavailable for questioning. Sketchy hardly begins to cover many of these people, including Helene, the negligent mother, and her current boyfriend Kenny, a violent ex-con. Angie is on the verge of losing it when they interview Brian Corliss, Sophie's father. In a memorable exchange she demands: “'So, I'm just supposed to sit back and let an emotionally abusive parent swim in his own self-rightiousness....I mean is this it?....Is this the job? Did I forget it's just talking to people who make you want to scour your skin with a Brillo pad?'” Patrick can only respond “'Sometimes.' I looked over at her. 'All right – most times.'” (Location 148)

Lehane has written a serviceable mystery/thriller. However, where he excedes is in his acute portrayal of Boston class differences. He depicts the DUI perp dressed in expensive jeans trendily faded and ripped, self-absorbed and barely articulate. The Caroline Howard Gilman School for Girls which Amanda attended is the kind of exclusive institution that caters to behaviorally problematic daughters with the means to shop at Nordstrom's and Barneys and not the Gap regularly. Patrick currently does contract work for Duhamel-Standiford Global Security, a firm so discreet it never advertises. That would be too crass! Its clientele are even stratified. Old money, the kind that trace their descent back to the Mayflower, meet with the principal Morgan Duhamel at his Beacon Hill office; the merely wealthyt trek to the firm's sleek International Place suite. Aunt Bea is solidly working class with her prematurely lined face and flimsy jean jacket protecting her against Boston's wintry wind. When Patrick and Angie stop off at a small diner nestled in the Berkshires he notes that they are the only ones not wearing work boots, ball caps, jeans or plaid.

The plot is convoluted and not always believable, but it is pure Boston with its descriptive locales and varied dialogue. I picked this book up from a “freebie” shelf outside the library and am glad I did. It reminded me of Lehane's varied talents as a writer.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

8/10

Major caveat to this book; do not read this without reading “Gone, Baby, Gone” or at the very least seeing the movie version. The plot developments in that book heavily influence what is going on in this book.

To be honest, I wouldn’t recommend anyone new to Lehane’s work to this one. Whilst it’s a good read it’s not his best and is probably the weakest of the 6 Kenzie and Genaro novels. This is no bad thing mind; I’d much rather read a below-par Lehane than some people on their finest form.

There has been roughly a decade between the publication of the last novel and this one and things have changed with Kenzie and Genaro as is expected over such a period of time. The major impact has been the failing economy and how it has hit the couple hard meaning they are scraping to make ends meet and having to pursue other ventures as supposed to sleuthing. This added another level not seen in the other books, a certain desperation to all people involved and a driving factor for some of the actions taking by all parties on both sides of the fence.

The introduction of Yefim was disappointing in that I wish he’d have turned up at the start of the series and being in all the books! He was a great addition to this story and there were some humorous moments between Yefim and Kenzie. Also a mention to Bubba, always great and always a pleasure to read about him. Maybe there could be a Yefim and Bubba spin off. I’ll see if I can pitch something to Lehane’s people....

I have to tip my hat to Lehane. This was a fine send off for the couple that he has well and truly put through the ringer over the years. I can’t see there being another in this series but if there is it will be welcomed by me. All in all not his finest in the series and not a great standalone novel but a good read and a solid close to the series.

If you like this try: “The Winter of Frankie Machine” by Don Wimslow

[switterbug (Betsey) · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have read all of Lehane's stand-alones, and especially enjoyed Mystic River. This is my first "Patrick and Angie" book, and I was thoroughly disappointed by it.

This novel appears to have been written primarily as a screenplay, one that panders to a fist-in-the-air high-five PC audience. If you removed all the unnecessary filler of political references, you could probably cut out 40 pages. (I agree with many of the references, but I don't agree that they belong in this book). It was overt and pandering distraction.

The characters are straight out of cardboard central and are either implausible or ludicrously precious. I don't believe any adolescent from Southie uses the word "arcane" or rolls the words "Solntsevskaya Bratva" off her tongue. But just because Lehane spends a lot of exposition time telling us that this girl, Amanda, has a blazing intelligence does not back up the incongruous profile he has created. Her diction reflects a mature, older woman, an academic or maybe a senator. No matter how smart she is, her diction and vernacular are going to reflect her turf, age, and home influences. I don't believe she would speak like a dissertation candidate at Oxford. Additionally, Patrick and Angie are nothing short of adorably cuddly and the Russians are meretricious stereotypes.

Ironically, Lehane inserts his moral compass, to the point of intrusion, on a regular basis. But somehow I missed his righteousness paired with a morally abhorrent assassin playing "uncle" to Patrick and Angie's toddler daughter. It is supposed to be charming and cute, especially when Bubba gets a love interest. He strikes me as a sociopath who I wouldn't let near any member of my family. That kind of manipulation in books and movies goes beyond gratuitous. The thing is, if this had been an Adam Sandler comedy, I would have accepted it. But, other than the twee and self-consciously clever banter, he took himself and this book rather seriously.

The cringe factor of this story is too much. Is this what popular fiction is these days? I used to think Lehane was a cut above John Grisham and Dan Brown.

I am from Boston, and enjoyed the rich sense of place he created in Mystic River. I did get a trickle of it occasionally in this book, but not enough to offset this ingratiating mess of a straight-to-Hollywood story.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

As usual, this was well written & every time I thought the obvious would happen, it didn't, but it was just depressing the whole way through. A dozen years after Gone, Baby, Gone, Amanda has gone missing again & the past is dredged up again, but with twists tied by a master. Lehane addresses some tough issues & they certainly made me think. I didn't come to any conclusions, though. It sucks to do the right, legal thing & still be wrong.

This hit home hard because I've raised 3 kids & had a few that hung around because our house was a better home than they had. The kids were older, in high school, but I've covered some of this ground already in real life. If I've come to any conclusions about parenting is that no matter how hard I tried, I never got it right. Still, the kids turned out pretty well.

Like I said, depressing. Still, it was a great story & too realistic to truly be a fun escape. I wouldn't have missed it, though.

[Rohit Enghakat · Rating 3 out of 5]

This author is usually a delight to read. His writing style is fluid and easy to grasp with a liberal dash of sarcastic humour which I find it in a very few authors and that too a crime fiction author. However this book fell short of expectations. While all the above mentioned characteristics were available, the story line was a bit of a drag.

The plot involves Patrick Kenzie taking on the task of finding a missing teenage girl Amanda McCready who apparently has disappeared the second time. He has his wife Angie Gennaro for company. The first time seems to be about 12 years ago (I am sure there must be a book on that) when she was abducted. Patrick had traced her and handed over to her mother who was an alcoholic. This time she has again disappeared and their search leads them to another adventure involving Russian mobs, drug dealers et al.

The 2nd half is where the action comes to halt and thereon it becomes a drag. Anyways, despite the content and the plot, the read is enjoyable.

[Arah-Lynda · Rating 4 out of 5]

So I picked this up at my local superstore. Bargain bin…. $3 hard cover; Dennis Lehane why not? I had read Shutter Island and liked it. And so it was that I even started reading this, sans knowledge, until a nagging familiarity prevailed and I realized this was the sequel to Gone,Baby,Gone. Never read that, but saw the movie.

The theme of moral dilemma that permeates that story is alive and well here. Only different…… more grey and black, less white!

Thinking this was a 3.5, I pondered having read the sequel only, considered; having still remained engaged throughout, and generously bumped it up to 4.


I’m not saying I will never read Gone,Baby,Gone but right now I am thinking I should read a different Lehane. Any recommendations out there?

[Fred · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had to start twice but it's worth it.

Patrick Kenzie is on a case of find missing 16 yr old Amanda McCready, she was missing in "Gone, Baby, Gone" when 4.
Kenzie married Gennaro now have their own family & a 4 year-old daughter.
Patrick does the dangerous investigation alone. After solving, Patrick throws his gun into Boston's Charles River & meets his family at Boston's Logan airport.

Ending he says..."I thought I’d get my master’s. I’m pretty sure I could secure some kind of financial aid, a grant, something. My grades were pretty stellar back in the day.”

It sounds like this is the end of the series?

[Bob Mayer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very disturbing book. I always enjoy Dennis Lehane. This sequel to Gone, Baby, Gone deals with the controversial ending of that book. Can the protagonist do the right thing this time?
At times I was irritated by the constant reference to old songs, etc. but then realized it was emphasizing the theme of the book by the time I got to the end.
Basically, this book is about adults having to grow up and accept responsibility. You just can't do whatever you want when you are responsible for other people.
I highly recommend this.

[Andrew Smith · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lehane has written two great books - this isn't one of them. If you're new to this writer then I'd urge you to seek out Mystic River & Shutter Island, both of which are superb. The rest? Well, give 'em a miss to be honest. This is book is the latest story in a detective series I was ambivalent about to start with & I'd now go as far as to say I acitively dislike. I think you get the picture...

[Brandon · Rating 4 out of 5]

After shelving Kenzie and Gennaro for eleven years, Lehane returned to his signature characters in 2010 with the series’ sixth novel, Moonlight Mile. A lot has happened since we last left the detectives. Patrick and Angie have since tied the knot and brought life into the world in their four year old daughter, Gabby. Feeling the pinch of the recession, Patrick is stuck freelancing for a big investigation firm, hoping to woo them enough to be hired on fulltime while Angie is taking classes working toward a degree.

Patrick is approached by Beatrice McCready, the estranged aunt of the once missing Amanda McCready - the same Amanda that Patrick and Angie worked hard to track down twelve years ago (1998s Gone, Baby, Gone). Bea tells Patrick that Amanda, now 16, has gone missing a second time and once again requests Patrick’s assistance in finding her. While initially reluctant, Patrick views this as his shot at redemption as he looks to ease the guilt over the results of the last time she went missing.

Revisiting Kenzie & Gennaro’s most famous case was likely the right move on Lehane’s part in resurrecting the series. I can’t speak for everyone, but I know I was curious as to what happened to little Amanda McCready and in Moonlight Mile, Lehane is determined to put her through the ringer one last time. While the plot isn’t quite as complex as Gone, Baby, Gone, Lehane keeps things interesting by introducing a plethora of bit characters that populate some memorable scenes. Russian gangsters Pavel and Yefim stole every scene they were in - so much so that I’d read the hell out of a book featuring just those two. Lehane somehow made Amanda’s mother Helene even more despicable this time around and Patrick & Angie’s encounter with a fitness guru yields some laughs, if only due to the man’s missing moral compass.

If this is where Lehane chooses to end the series, it’s difficult to come up with any complaints. While life doesn’t often give us happy endings, it’s nice to know that once in awhile, the truly good people out there do get what they deserve in the end.

[Marty Fried · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, it seems pretty obvious that it's over. Patrick throws away his gun and gets a regular job, Angie is going to school, and they have a young girl child. I enjoyed this final chapter, though perhaps not quite as much as most of the others.

I did enjoy the villains, some Russian Mafia types. I thought the main guy that was after everyone was pretty likable in many ways, even though he was a bit immoral, I think. I'm not totally sure, as the people he worked for were totally crazy, and I'm not sure how much of it he agreed with - certainly not all of it, as we find out. He was pretty funny at times, too.

It was a pretty convoluted story, but lots of fun for all, except the ones who died, and perhaps Patrick didn't enjoy having a cigarette put out on his palm.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

I saw Dennis Lehane speak at the Brooklyn book festival last year, and he was incredibly engaging. He was promoting Live by Night, which sounded very interesting, but wasn't out yet. So not wanting to leave empty handed, I wanted to pick up a book of his. There were copies of Mystic River and Gone, Baby, Gone, but I had seen the movie adaptations of both of those books. Then I saw this book, and remembering how unsettled I was at the end of Gone, Baby, Gone, I figured its sequel was a great place to start. Of course this is the sixth book about Kenzie and Gennaro, and that was the fourth, but what the hell, I didn't know that while I was standing at the table of his books.

So I started this never having read Lehane, but having seen two of his movies, and having seen him on Castle as one of the fictional author's poker buddies. The first thing that struck me was how true everything rang. Some authors have a knack for dialogue, others for setting or mood, etc., but everything in Moonlight Mile rang true, from the way Kenzie and Gennaro's four-year-old talked, to the impact the recession was having on their blue-collar family. For example, at one point when discussing their lack of finances, Angie says the line "then we'll eat soup." It's off-the-cuff and has no bearing on the plot or mystery, but I felt it their fictional struggle so hard right there I almost cried, and I can't remember the last time any book made me cry.

The only negative I have for this book is that its blue-collar struggle theme, mood and tone is so real and powerful, it may be best to read whenever this country is in an up market, and not struggling through a recession.

[Paula · Rating 4 out of 5]

Needed a genre change up from previous books, and this novel did not disappoint. A nice blend of suspense with a little humor, just what I needed. Had me hooked from the start, guessing how the story would end.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was one of those people that was enraged when Dennis Lehane gave that interview trashing the Patrick & Angie books. I love those books. They're real, raw, dark, and unflinching. To read him trashing them as crap was a blow and really offensive as a reader. Apparently he got the point and lo and behold, a new Patrick & Angie book!

For the most part I liked it. It was interesting that he went back to the characters from Gone, Baby, Gone. I don't find that to be the strongest of these books but by the end of this current one I realized why he'd done it.

He still can absolutely take your breath away with a single sentence, a thought Patrick throws out that just smacks you silly with its brutal honesty and simplicity. I love that about his writing. Patrick, pardon my language, was a bit of a douche in the beginning of the book but grows back into himself while it progresses.

I wish I could say the same about Angie. She was a strong, intelligent, take no shit kind of woman in all of the books - the movie made her weak, which I hated about it. In this book, she's just taking up space. He doesn't even utilize Bubba. He's more of an afterthought.

By the end of the book it is screamingly obvious that the only reason Lehane wrote this was to truly end the Patrick & Angie line. It wasn't about growth, it wasn't about "12 years later", about how everyone had changed - it was a simple, "There, it's written, it's done, shut up and move on" and that doesn't sit well with me.

[Kathryn · Rating 2 out of 5]

A weak follow-up to the fantastic Gone Baby Gone.

I've been waiting for over 10 years to learn Amanda McCready's fate, so I jumped at the sequel which has the now 16-year old Amanda disappearing for a second time with Kenzie once again employed to track her down. The premise sounds amazing, but the plot's thin and predictable. Lehane, who generally specializes in creating memorable characters, failed to do so here. New characters were either generic or one-dimensional.

There were traces of the wit found in other Lehane novels, and that, combined with return of Kenzie, Gennaro, and Bubba, were the only shining beacons in an otherwise subpar novel. It seems like Lehane might have be in a rush to complete the novel or was feeling pressure from his publishing company.

Really 2.5 stars.

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like this author. He does so many things well. I love the characters. They feel genuine. They are flawed, but they know how to plow ahead. I also like the relationships. There is an ease about them that pulls me in. The natural dialogue helps with that.

He also has some great story lines. I love how he doesn't do "obvious". He knows how to interject some great twists. It keeps the pace going. So 4 stars.

[Kathryn in FL · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this CD, I find it hard to write a review of why it was so compelling. The narrator did a phenomenal job with the voices for more than a dozen characters. I think that actually made the book more spicy.

The publisher's blurb summarizes the story quite well. This is my first book in the Kenzie/Gennaro genre. The husband and wife team of Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro must locate a missing teenager, only to discover that she has something that the Russian mob desires, her infant daughter. However, the situation is no so cut and dried. In the midst of locating a missing young girl, they discover that unwed mom giving birth is not the only story and the layers involved increases the risk for the couple and their precocious 4 yr. old. As the story unfolds the problems seem untenable. However, Patrick Kenzie has some good instincts and his tenacity pays off but not without some intense moments when he has to confront the mob head on.

This book had some graphic scenes and though I prefer to not to know such details, it was acceptable for the storyline.

I liked the primary characters enough that I will read the rest of the series if possible, or listen if the same narrator does the series.