Gone, Baby, Gone

Kenzie & Gennaro #4

by Dennis Lehane

Boston private detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro are hired to find four-year-old Amanda McCready, abducted from her bed on a warm, summer night. They meet her stoned-out, strangely apathetic mother, her loving aunt and uncle, the mother's dangerous, drug-addled friends, and two cops who've found so many abused or dead children they may be too far over the edge to come back.

Despite enormous public attention, rabid news coverage, and dogged police work, the investigation repeatedly hits a brick wall. Led into a world of drug dealers, child molesters, and merciless executioners, Patrick and Angie are soon forced to face not only the horrors adults can perpetrate on innocents but also their own conflicted feelings about what is best, and worst, when it comes to raising children. And as the Indian summer fades and the autumn chill deepens, Amanda McCready stays gone, banished so completely that she seems never to have existed.

Then another child disappears. . . .

Dennis Lehane takes you into a world of triple crosses, elaborate lies, and shrouded motives, where the villains may be more moral than the victims, the missing should possibly stay missing, and those who go looking for them may not come back alive.

Settle in and turn off the phone. From its haunting opening to its shocking climax, Gone, Baby, Gone is certain to be one of the most thrilling, talked-about suspense novels you read this year.

Dennis Lehane is the author of Sacred; Darkness, Take My Hand, and A Drink Before the War which won the Shamus Award for Best First Novel presented by the Private Eye Writers of America, and was also a Boston Globe best-seller. Lehane was born and raised in Dorchester, Massachusetts, and still lives in the Boston area. He holds an M.F.A. in creative writing.

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

560 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published July 22, 1998

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

[Kemper · Rating 5 out of 5]

And then depression set in….

This book wrecked me the first time I read it. It was almost like having post traumatic stress syndrome. I found myself staring blankly at the walls for days after I finished it the first time. I felt like calling my sister and telling her to keep my young niece locked in the house until she was at least 25. I remember meeting a friend for beers shortly after I finished it, and that he asked me what was wrong. When I tried to explain, he was skeptical. “You’re really this bummed over a book?” And yes, I was that bummed over a book.

Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro have had enough of the crazy-ass violence that has surrounded them for three novels. They still run their detective agency, but they’re strictly doing routine jobs with no chance of anyone getting hurt. They’re also finally relatively happy with their lives.

That changes when they get hired to look for Amanda McCready, a 4 year old girl who has been missing for days. The cops and media are all over it, but Amanda’s aunt and uncle want Patrick and Angie to join the search. The detectives are reluctant, partly because they don’t think that they can do anything that the cops aren’t doing already, and partly because neither of them is anxious to sign on for what is almost surely going to be a case that ends badly. However, the aunt’s desperate request for help gets the better of them. By the end of it all, they’ll really wish they would have just gone on vacation.

At this point, you’re probably thinking, “Kemper, you dumb bastard. You read a book about a child abduction by Dennis Lehane, a guy you knew wasn’t exactly Mr. Giggles. Were you really expecting a happy ending?”

Yes, I knew it was probably going to be a depressing story, but while I had braced myself for all kinds of terrible things happening to kids (and terrible things do happen), I wasn’t ready for the more banal cruelty and neglect that Lehane sprinkled the book with in regards to how some people treat their children.

Amanda’s mother, Helene, is a barfly and small-time doper who doesn’t do anything really bad enough to technically qualify as abuse, but Amanda was usually left to entertain herself in front of the TV. It’s the tiny details that are heartbreaking like when Patrick checks out Amanda’s room and finds a mattress on the floor, few toys, and no books of any kind, not even coloring books. Or when they talk to the people on Amanda’s t-ball team and everyone notes how she’s the quietest kid around who acts like she’s used to being ignored. You’d have to be one cold bastard not to be saddened by it.

This is one of the best crime novels I’ve read. Maybe even the best. But you won’t be skipping down the street and whistling any time soon after you read it.

**A Few Thoughts on the Movie Version**

I was not a fan of Ben Affleck. I thought he was a complete goober, and that Matt Damon must have wrote most of Good Will Hunting because I couldn’t imagine that Ben could read, let alone write anything. When I heard that he was going to be one of the people writing the adapted screenplay and directing the movie version of one of my favorite books, they probably heard my screams of outrage in Hollywood. When he cast his brother Casey as Patrick, I exhausted my extensive vocabulary of profanity and swore I’d never see the movie.

Wow. I was definitely wrong on that one. The movie version is not only one of the best crime novel adaptations I’ve seen, it’s just an incredibly good movie, period. (And Ben Affleck’s recent adaptation of another book The Town is also a very good flick so the guy has some very real skills.)

What surprised me most is that Affleck made a couple of very smart changes from the book to the movie. He revised Patrick and Angie from veteran smart-ass gun fighting private detectives to a couple of kids who mostly track down people skipping out on bills. That allowed him to introduce the audience to them, and really gave weight to the idea that these were two characters in way over their heads.

Affleck also tightened up the story to the point that I’d almost call it an improvement over the book’s plot. That’s incredibly rare. My only complaints are that Angie didn’t come across as Angie-like in the film version (although she still gets one of her best Big Damn Hero moments in the film), and that Bubba has a much smaller role. Plus, Bubba is portrayed more as just a bad-ass street guy rather than the one-man army he is in the book, but again, it works perfectly with the way Affleck chose to tell the story.

Now that he’s adapted two crime novels into top-notch movies, I’m ready to start my own chapter of the Ben Affleck fan club. Just as long as he doesn’t do any more Michael Bay movies.

[Will Byrnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

When Beatrice McReady approaches PIs Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro to help find her missing niece, Amanda, the prospects do not look good. But Patrick and Angie work with the local missing child unit, bringing in their regular cast of colorful associates to lend their able and sometimes bloody hands. There are the usual misdirections, cul-de-sacs and things that just do not make sense.


Casey Affleck as Patrick Kenzie and Michelle Monaghan as Angie Gennaro

VERY LARGE
Ultimately, it turns out that the missing child cops are involved in taking children from problem homes and placing them with discrete families (including their own) where the children can be raised with love and a decent level of material comfort. This creates issues as Patrick must decide whether to turn in the criminal cops when doing so will mean that children at risk will be returned to awful birth-parents. Beware. Do not read this if you have not already read the book or seen the film!

A typical, well done Kenzie and Gennaro tale. Instead of child abuse, he is doing child neglect as the primary thread, but he manages to focus also on horrific child abuse by a psychotic couple, returning to his favorite crime.

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

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

Other books by Lehane I have read/reviewed

Kenzie and Gennaro
-----A Drink Before War - #1
-----Darkness, Take My Hand - #2
-----Sacred - #3
-----Prayers for Rain - #5
-----Moonlight Mile - #6

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

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

[Shelby *trains flying monkeys* · Rating 5 out of 5]

Each day in this country, twenty-three hundred children are reported missing.



Kenzie and Angie don't really want to take this case. A missing four year old girl that was taken from her home, while her drugged out mom is supposedly next door at her friend's house watching tv. The mom did not even lock the door. She was in such a hurry that she just left it open. With her child inside.
I didn't want to find Amanda McCready. I wanted someone else to.
But maybe because I'd become as caught up in this case over the last few days as the rest of the city, or maybe because it had happened here in my neighborhood, or maybe just because "four-year-old" and "missing" aren't words that should go together in the same sentence.

They do end up taking the case and team up with a couple of cops that are on the case. Their old classmate Cheese may factor into the child's disappearance. A drug deal gone bad where money is taken and the child suffers the consequences?


Or is there more to the story? So many twists and turns in this book. Then just when I thought I had somewhat figured it out I got slammed against the wall.
This book makes you question right and wrongs in the world. Should things be so black and white? I don't know the answers to these questions and Dennis Lehane I sorta hate you for putting all this in my head.

I just don't have any more words for this book. I was just going to throw up five stars and walk away. Just read this series. Hug your kids.

Facades, no matter how well built, usually come down.

[Em Lost In Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

four year old Amanda walked out of her house in the middle of night while her mother was at neighbors watching TV, and no one heard about her even after days of search. Everything came to a dead end. Amanda's aunt request Petrik and Angie to look for the child. Patrick and Angie found a big clue about the girl's disappearance but things instead of solving gets messier and scarier.

Lehane wrote an exceptional story here about kidnapping, drugs, abuse, and pain. Writing is flawless and gives chills to the readers with almost real description of crime scenes. I found third book in the series to be average but Lehane bounced back superbly and gave us this tightly knit thriller.

After completing a book in this series I say to myself, "now you know these two like the back of your hand." but Lehane always proves me wrong and showed me a new side of Patrick and Angie, it's like he is peeling layer after layer in each book. Don't know what I will get after the final book.

A dark yet moving read which tells us how unpredictably dangerous people around us can be.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Posted at Shelf Inflicted

I knew this was going to be a very dark story. After reading the very disturbing Darkness, Take My Hand, about a vicious and sadistic serial killer who knew no limits when it came to human depravity, I didn’t imagine it could get much worse. I was wrong.

Though Patrick and Angie are tired of the violence and inhumanity that plagued their earlier cases, they agree to accept this latest case of a four-year-old girl who was abducted from her bed. Amanda’s mom, Helene, who is far from the perfect parent, uses drugs, drinks, and is addicted to TV. Amanda has a loving aunt and uncle who desperately want her to be found.

Patrick and Angie realize that a child’s disappearance must be solved quickly, or it will never be. With the help of two detectives in the Boston Police Department who believe in their own brand of justice, the denizens of their rough Dorchester neighborhood, and of course, Bubba, Patrick and Angie plunge headlong into one of their most difficult, complex, and emotional cases, confronting bad parenting, child abuse, pedophilia, and murder. They learn about themselves and each other, and discover that life and justice are not always black and white.

I had a difficult time putting the book down and enjoyed the growth of Angie and Patrick’s relationship, their feelings about children, and the questionable characters with good intentions. The story left me shaken and numb and thinking about it for days.

It was a great movie too!

[Mort · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 STARS

This is a brilliant book.
I’ve read most of his published work and I’m a huge fan, especially the Kenzie and Gennaro series.
Lehane has a gift as a writer – his character development is probably the best in the business. By the end of his novels, you feel like you know the main characters as if they are a part of your family. You genuinely care and – in this case, especially – you will feel things deeply.

***POSSIBLE SPOILER, BUT PROBABLY NOT***

I’m not going to lie, it’s difficult to digest at the end, because you will have to ask yourself this question:
When is doing the right thing the wrong thing to do?

In terms of quality, I will put this story right up there with Mystic River as his best work.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Hello, darkness my old friend…”

Having read The Grapes of Wrath earlier this year, I didn’t think another book could top it for sheer despair. Was I ever wrong. It’s as if at the end of the book the Joad’s drove their truck to the local abattoir and let loose on their frustrations.

The book centers on an abduction of a four year old and the involvement of Dennis Lehane’s private investigator duo, Kenzie and Gennaro, in the attempt to recover the child. It’s a journey that takes the reader straight down the dark coal shoot into the blackest abyss. What you find there are the baser and crueler elements of what one human can inflict upon another.

Reading this brought to mind James Ellroy. Whereas Ellroy’s noir careens into the grotesque, Lehane’s feels like a rasp; uncomfortably, repeatedly going over your emotions till they're raw. There’s no reprieve from the hopelessness and despondency; no island of joy to cradle in, no pause for a gulp of fresh, sweet air.

A powerful and moving glimpse into the bleakness of the human condition.

I want to thank my friend Kelly for buddy reading this with me. Her daily status updates kept it light.

[William · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five stars, and more.

A Masterpiece of crime noir, complex and thrilling, with a difficult and courageous ending.

As usual with my reviews, please first read the publisher’s blurb/summary of the book so that I don't have to repeat the basic plot.

I am struck by how similar Lehane’s writing is to Robert B. Parker’s, and yet how different the feeling is. In Lehane, the sense of pain and loss, especially of lost childhood friends, weighs heavily upon Patrick and Angie, and through them, on us.

I’m also very impressed with how much Lehane’s prose increases in power and control with every book. This is book #4 and he’s already a giant. Wow.

2% ... This is the introduction to a much, much deeper novel. This is the surface, the emotions we all share, but it's only the beginning of where Lehane wants to go.
“Amanda McCready had been missing for at least sixty hours by this point, maybe as long as seventy, and I didn’t want to find her stuffed in a Dumpster somewhere, her hair matted with blood. I didn’t want to find her six months down the road, vacant-eyed and used up by some freak with a video camera and a mailing list of pedophiles. I didn’t want to look in a four-year-old’s eyes and see the death of everything that had been pure in her.”

5% ... Wow... Down we go, in Lehane's assured hands...
“When a child disappears, the space she’d occupied is immediately filled with dozens of people. And these people—relatives, friends, police officers, reporters from both TV and print—create a lot of energy and noise, a sense of communal intensity, of fierce and shared dedication to a task.

“But amid all that noise, nothing is louder than the silence of the missing child. It’s a silence that’s two and a half to three feet tall, and you feel it at your hip and hear it rising up from the floorboards, shouting to you from corners and crevices and the emotionless face of a doll left on the floor by the bed.

“It’s a silence that’s different from the one left at funerals and wakes. The silence of the dead carries with it a sense of finality; it’s a silence you know you must get used to. But the silence of a missing child is not something you want to get used to; you refuse to accept it, and so it screams at you.

“The silence of the dead says, Goodbye.

“The silence of the missing says, Find me.”

7% ... Deeper still. If you have kids, you know this already... Here is Doyle speaking:
“But for two minutes, while we’re standing in this Dunkin’ Donuts waiting for our coffee, I look at Tricia and she looks at me and both of us, without saying a word, know that if Shannon is dead, we’re dead, too. Our marriage—over. Our happiness—over. Our lives would be one long road of pain. Nothing else, really. Everything good and hopeful, everything we lived for, really, would die with our daughter.”

8% ... Do you think Trump read this? Lehane wrote it in 1998....
“She was lonely; there were no good men left; they needed to put a fence up around Mexico to keep out all those Mexicans who were apparently stealing jobs up here in Boston. She was sure there was a liberal agenda to corrupt every decent American but she couldn’t articulate what that agenda was, only that it affected her ability to be happy and it was determined to keep blacks on welfare. Sure, she was on welfare herself, but she’d been trying hard these last seven years to get off.”

18% ... Wow. Very powerful and dark scene begins here. Patrick lost in the terrors of his past. A page or two of true brilliance from Lehane:
“... every time I looked at one of the dark [windows], Gerry Glynn’s face leered back at me, his hair soaked with gasoline, his face spotted with the blood of his last victim, Phil Dimassi.
I pulled the shades.
"Patrick," Gerry whispered from the center of my chest, "I’m waiting for you.”

26% ... The Broussard and Poole cop show here is LOL funny! Woot! Especially with cats and bloaters.

31% ... Literate Lehane, laced with humour:
“I don’t remember if Bubba had ever messed with Cheese or not, but even if he had, Cheese was smart enough to know that, when it came to warfare, Cheese would be the German army and Bubba the Russian winter. So Cheese stuck to the fronts and battles he knew he could win.”

45% ... Nice character development... Some piercing insights into Patrick's makeup, and how he turns his hatred of his cruel father into a shining self-discipline.
“The crucial difference between my father and me—I hope—has always been a matter of action. He acted on his anger, whenever and wherever it beset him. His temper ruled him the way alcohol or pride or vanity rules other men. At a very early age, just as the child of an alcoholic swears he’ll never drink, I swore to guard against the advance of the red marble, the cold blood, the tendency toward monotone. Choice, I’ve always believed, is all that separates us from animals. A monkey can’t choose to control his appetite. A man can. My father, at certain hideous moments, was an animal. I refuse to be.”

55% ... The anti-climax of the quarry scenes are confused and drawn out a bit too long.

61% ... I lived in Boston for ten years, so Lehane’s descriptions and pocket histories of the area make the stories come alive, and texture them in small but important ways. Here he mentions Germantown, a history I never knew. Very nice stuff.

63% ... one insight into Bubba’s sick world of arms dealing, the 100-round Calico M-110 sub-machine pistol. I look up most of the stuff I’ve never heard of in books. This is a sick little sidetrip into male obscenities .
“The M-110, at full auto, was capable of unleashing one hundred bullets in roughly fifteen seconds.”


71% ... ADVISORY: Do not read the first 3 paragraphs of chapter 26. You don’t need this. horrific child torture and murder All of this chapter is very hard. It somewhat extends the character of Patrick, and his solid relationship with Angela, but it can be skipped.

Chapter 27 is very hard, too.

74% ... Patrick, sounding a lot like Robert B. Parker :
“I’m a PI, because—I dunno, maybe I’m addicted to the great What Comes Next. Maybe I like tearing down facades. That doesn’t make me a good guy. It just makes me a guy who hates people who hide, pretend to be what they’re not.”

The final 1/4 of the book shows the major twist that we perhaps all knew was coming. It's deftly handled, mostly. The final scenes by the house near the woods would have been heart-wrenching, if only Lehane had been more spare, and with less polarised melodrama from the main characters.

But the Angela/Patrick twist is truly courageous. If Lehane had ended this the other ways, it would have been cowardice. This ending is painful, and wonderful.

It also seems to me to be a bit of a setup for book #5, vis a vis Patrick and Angela.

[Kelly (and the Book Boar) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Find all of my reviews at: http://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/

“Even if MY world is okay, THE world is still a pile of evil shit.”


(Wrong movie - spot-on quote. Also, doesn’t Matt Damon have the most punchable face in all the world? The correct answer is yes. Yes he does.)

This was a buddy read with my pal The Jeff, but I can’t wait any longer for his slow ass to finish so my review is going up now ; )

In all seriousness, words can’t express how thankful I am that I buddied up with The Jeff for this one. Let’s just say I wasn’t in a real good place this past week so there was no way I could have made it through without adding some levity via status updates with my pal.

Gone Baby Gone is the fourth installment in the Kenzie & Gennaro series and covers the investigation of a 4-year old little girl who has gone missing in Dorchester. Man this book was dark. It’s a story that won’t just break your heart, it might break your entire being. It will most definitely tear your blood pumper into ten thousand pieces, douse those pieces with gasoline, and light the match.

I’ve never read a book where I already knew the whodunit before even beginning. However, since Gone Baby Gone was a feature film starring the incomparable Morgan Freeman about 8 or so years ago, I was already familiar with the story. That being said, Lehane’s writing is so stellar that even though I totally knew how things would play out I still found myself . . .



and questioning whether my memory was correct.

Speaking of the writing . . .

“Nothing is louder than the silence of the missing child. It’s a silence that’s two and a half to three feet tall, and you feel it at your hip and hear it rising up from the floorboards, shouting to you from corners and crevices and the emotionless face of a doll left on the floor by the bed. It’s a silence that’s different from the one left at funerals and wakes. The silence of the dead carries with it a sense of finality; it’s a silence you know you must get used to. But the silence of a missing child is not something you want to get used to; you refuse to accept it, and so it screams at you.

The silence of the dead says, Goodbye.

The silence of the missing says, Find me.”

Excuse me for a second . . .



With regard to the movie version if you’ve not yet seen it, let me tell you it’s one of the best adaptations from page to screen I’ve seen (even the miscasting of certain characters worked well). And while I don’t find Battfleck as punchable as Matt Damon, I’m not a huge fan of his acting inability. However, as a director of a gritty crime drama set in Southie???? Amazing. The film also happens to feature one of the most quotable quotes in the history of movies and one that I use around my house on the regular . . . .


(Don’t you wish you were married to me? Yeah, Jeff does too.)

I’m obviously not going to tell you who the bad guy is, any twists and turns, or how things play out. All I’m going to say is some people shouldn’t ever be allowed to birth children . . .



Drugs are bad mmmmm’kay . . .



Don’t EVER f*&^ around with people named things like “Cheese” . . .



And when things seem a little far-fetched or too hinky, just go with it and be prepared for a read that makes you question everything a lot of the opinions you hold about what is right and what is wrong. Also be prepared to . . .

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

When a little girl goes missing and her mother's brother and sister-in-law hire them to find her, Patrick and Angela reluctantly accept. Their investigation drags them through a labyrinth of lies, one they will not emerge from unscathed...

Sweet zombie Jesus this is some good shit! I think Lehane might be the newest member of my crime fiction Holy Trinity with Lawrence Block and Richard Stark. Here's how it all went down.

After the events of Sacred, the previous book in the series, Patrick and Angela have more or less shacked up and have started bringing in big money. When Amanda McCready's family hires them, they take the case for the good of the child. I thought I had an idea where the case would go but it turned out I was way off. Gone, Baby, Gone was like walking down the sidewalk to get the mail and somehow ending up in Paraguay.

Gone, Baby, Gone is the most powerful Lehane book I've read yet. I thought I was desensitized to crimes against children from reading the Andrew Vachss Burke books but I was wrong. Like Mrs. Kemper's husband and I were discussing while I was reading, Angela and Patrick are much better people than Burke so the pieces of excrement they go up against while looking for a missing child seem that much more vile.

Lehane's strength is in his characters and he writes them very well. Patrick and Angela are the same people I've grown to know and love over the past few books. I felt like they dragged me to hell with them over the course of the investigation. Broussard and Poole drove the story forward and were likeable guys. I alternated feeling contempt and pity for Amanda's mother, Helene. Even Cheese was a well-realized character. Once things went pear-shaped, I couldn't believe Lehane had pulled the wool over my eyes so thoroughly, only to yank the rug out from under me so hard that I banged my head on the radiator.

I really can't say much more without giving away too much of the plot. Lehane made a believer out of me on this one. Five easy stars.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gone, Baby, Gone by Dennis Lehane is a 1999 Harper publication.

I must make a few confessions up front:

1: I saw the movie version of this title a long time ago and it was so good, I’ve always wanted to read the book, because, of course, the book is always better.

2: I haven’t read as many books by this author as I thought.

3: This is my first foray into the Kenzie & Gennaro series. In fact, I didn’t even know this book was a part of a series, until now.

I make these confessions with shaking hands since I’m sure my admission is tantamount to religious sacrilege to some folks, but hey, you have to start somewhere.

I was immensely curious how the book would differ from the movie, since Hollywood is notorious for taking liberties and on many occasions they flub the whole thing up. But, surprisingly the book and movie matched up, with only a few small differences.

All the same, the book was better, as I knew it would be, as it paints a far more detailed and emotional rendition, which had me enthralled, and gave me an even greater respect for this author.


When Amanda disappears, her Aunt Beatrice hires the PI team of Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro to find her.

The case winds up consuming the couple to the point of obsession, always at the forefront of their lives, until another child goes missing…

Well, what can you say? This was one incredible story and one that has sparked some rather heated debate in my household, all of us holding strong feelings on how the situation could have been handled.

While there is the obvious black and white answer, there are surely those among you who fall into that gray area, where your mind and logic tells you one thing, while your heart is telling you another.

But, no matter which way you slice it, this is one very twisty rollercoaster ride, spotlighting human flaws, and what one does to cope with the world, and how there are never easy answers to many of life’s questions. Sometimes the wrong thing feels like the right thing, in a twisted way that only makes sense when you are living in that moment. Those choices could backfire, or not, depending on the situation, could lead to regret, or no regrets. But, a tangled web has been woven, and good people become unwitting pawns in a convoluted scheme, and a price must be paid, a very high price, as it turns out.

This story stayed with me a long time and I still run the details over in mind on occasion, still feel sickened by what happened, and still feel conflicted by the decisions made.

When a novel really grabs you, affects your emotions, plays tricks on your mind, and breaks your heart, leaving a lasting impression, well, that’s what great storytelling is all about, and this author sure knows how to weave a tale.


5 stars

[Dave Edmunds · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25 ⭐'s

Initial Thoughts

Dennis Lehane is an author I always wanted to get into, after watching (and really enjoying) both Shutter Island and Mystic River. Wanting to start with something of his that I hadn't already experienced, I went with his modern take on the private detective genre. That is his Kenzie and Gennaro series.

And now I'm onto the fourth, and probably best known, book in the series. That is, of course, Gone Baby Gone with the movie adaptation by Ben Affleck. Weird place to kick off with it being being the fourth book, but we have seen that kind of thing before. I'm thinking Star Wars in case you didn't guess.

But back to what we're here for and that's those lovely books. What keeps drawing me back to this series is Lehane's deft skill as an author and the portrayal of his characters. What I love about Angela Genarro and Patrick Kenzie is just how real they come across. There's no special abilities or training. They get through those horrific situations by team work and pure determination, faults and all. And that's what I love. Let's see if they can keep it up this time round...

The Story

We pick back up with Pat and Ange as, after all the shit they've been through, they're trying to pick themselves back up by sticking to lower-stakes cases. But you know by now how these things go. Against their better judgement the pair are drawn into the hunt for a missing four-year-old girl, Amanda McCready.

The pair suspect that the poor girl is already dead, but are railroaded by Auntie Bea who won't take no for an answer. The police are already looking, but a pair of extra hands never hurts...particularly when they belong to Pat and Ange. But the investigation is about to take them into an underworld of drugs, mob bosses and child abuse. Sometimes solving a case is not all it is cracked up to be.

Final Thoughts

This series is epic and Lehane's stories draw you in and keep you there.
He's done a great job of fleshing out a world and filling it with the appropriate sort of people. I'm talking bad, nasty sadistic mo-fos. But also ones with a lot of humanity that are all too real.

Lehane grew up Dorchester, Boston, and it really shows as he writes what he knows. It all comes to life in Gone Baby Gone" and I've got to say, it's a really good book. I am glad that I read it, and would have no problem recommending it to anyone.

It could be the most horrific in the Kenzie-Gennaro series due to the presence of some shocking child abuse. So warning for you right there. But is it the best in the series? No chance! That still is, without doubt, Darkness Take My Hand. Ben Affleck, there's your next movie right there.

The narration, for me, fell a little bit short of what it has in previous entries. It seemed to loose some of the witty banter I've come to love. And for a fairly chunky book it did get bogged down in places. Most of that does occur in the first third of the book, so stick with it and your still in for a treat.

So overall a very solid entry to the series but, in my opinion, not the best on offer. But you know what? I can't wait for the next installment.

Thanks for reading and... Cheers!

[Alienor ✘ French Frowner ✘ · Rating 4 out of 5]

“In the middle of the journey of our life I found myself within a dark woods where the straight way was lost.” - Inferno, Dante

These books crawl under my skin. I always feel brave and strong while reading them because I seem to stomach everything but oh, look at how dumb you are, Anna.

They linger in me. My nightmares say it all. More than the what or the who or the how, the emotion flourishes deeper, digging into me and breaking my defenses.

These books haunt me - I can't find another word really. They haunt me with their sharp and hard take on the world. They feed my pessimism until I stop yelling NO MORE! NO MORE! They turn my stomach inside out. They move me. Scar me.

"Well, fine, my life's okay, but the world's still a pile of shit for most people. Even if my world is okay, the world is still a pile of evil shit.' You know?"

Their strength lies in the power they hold against my thoughts when I'm not reading.

Gone, Baby, Gone deals with child abuse. Start with caution, please. Be warned. As usual, Dennis Lehane will take your heart and squeeze, hard, until the darkness covers every tiny hope you were nurturing.

Who has the right to judge? Society? Individuals? As far as I have my answers - and yes, I quite agree with Patrick on this (not always, though), how flawed our reasoning can be - I know that there's no such thing as a right answer here. There's no such thing as a right choice, but shitty choices all the way. This complexity, always present in Dennis Lehane's book, is what make them so special in my heart. The world is not as Manichean as some people want us to think, even though it would be easier to deal with it if it was. Humans are selfish animals.

"Those who did remember probably shrugged off the chill of her memory, turned their heads down to the sports page or up toward the approaching bus. The world is a terrible place, they thought. Bad things happen every day. My bus is late."

Is the ability to forget inherent to the human being? Are we all trying to protect ourselves and those we love on an everyday basis? Maybe. Frankly, I'm not skilled enough to judge the world (who is?), and neither is Dennis Lehane : what he offers us here is a portray of the kaleidoscope that is life, and it's brilliant.

Favorite, then? Well, this is awkward. This book is probably the favorite of many readers, and I expected that it would be the same for me. However, as you can infer from my 4 stars rating, Gone, Baby, Gone lost the opportunity to uncrown Darkness, Take My Hand.

What makes this series so different for me? Definitely Patrick and Angie, the heart of the series, with their sarcastic and badass moves (also, Bubba). In the first half of Gone, Baby, Gone, it seemed to me that Patrick and Angie were only the shells of themselves.

As a standalone, I can't deny that it was an incredible book through and through, even though I found the first half quite slow. Yet it is not a standalone, but part of a series I LOVE, and during the first 50% I missed Patrick's quick mind and wit. I missed Angie's clever retorts. I've read the first three books in the span of 10 days, and I'm pretty sure I've got their spirit well in mind. They weren't quite there at first in my opinion. Except for Bubba. His parts were my little sunshine (I know, I'm such a psycho).

This being said, after passing the 60% mark, the characters finally gave me the usual feels and ... I love them. So much. It was painful. It was raw. Again, everything is more complex than it appears at first glance : it's almost ridiculous to see how many times Dennis Lehane can surprise me. Damn. If I wasn't so engrossed in his stories, I'd be mad.

But now? I'm pretty sure I'm broken.

Ps. I said earlier that I would wait before starting the fifth book and as it is... I can't. I need more Bubba, more Patrick, and more Angie. Now even more.

For more of my reviews, please visit:

[Mihaela Abrudan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of Doamne. Nu știu ce să scriu despre această carte. Cutremurătoare, sfâșietoare, incredibilă, pur și simplu te sfâșie și te întrebi cum ai fi procedat tu. Înțeleg că este inspirată dintr-un fapt real. După ce am citit cartea m-a uitat și la adaptarea ei, iar tragedia a devenit și mai mare. Dacă aș putea da mai mult de 5 stele i-aș da 10.
PS. Eleonora dacă ai vrut să mă omori, ai reușit.

[fคrຊคຖ.tຖ · Rating 4 out of 5]

یک داستان معمایی-پلیسی خیلی خوب 😍 روند داستان رو دوست داشتم و از نظر من کند نبود.
آه که چقدر دلم برای بچه‌های بدسرپرست می‌سوزه 💔 کاش جور دیگه‌ای تموم می‌شد... پایانی شادتر برای آماندا کوچولو 😔

[Mara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just finished this book- like, literally, turned the final page, put it down, and am now writing. So, it's possible that I'm violating some rule of thumb akin to waiting two hours after you eat before swimming or not going to bed angry. However, there's a sort of queasy discomfort I have after finishing this fourth volume of the Kenzie & Gennaro corpus that might dissolve given enough lag time that I wanted to get down.

Lehane has left me with the disquieting malaise of a wicked problem . Wicked problems are defined (in part) by their lack of definitive solution. And, at least for me, uncertainty is not a favorite feeling. This book, of course, is not a discourse in moral philosophy. Patrick and Angie are brought in to look for the missing child of a less than stellar mother at the behest of the girl's uncle. As usual, there are layers of intrigue, action and tension for miles.

If nothing more, this one will definitely make you feel something, but it will likely be a something you can't quite pin down.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

“When I was young, I asked my priest how to get to heaven and still protect yourself from all the evil in the world. He told me what God told His children; 'You are sheep among wolves, be wise as the serpent, yet innocent as doves.'”

This is by far the best installment in Dennis Lehane's great series following inner city Boston private detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro (with Darkness, Take My Hand being a close second). And the VERY BEST detective novel I've read so far. I know that's saying a lot but I don't say it lightly. Lehane always proves to be a master of plotting, and here, he not only takes a simple missing child mystery and turns it into something endlessly addictive and compelling, but he ends it well too. The final reveal and resolution came at me like a hard fist to the face, sending me reeling for days. It's ingenious and truly one of a kind, and left me to ponder even my own morality. When a novel in such a crowded and cliché-ridden field as the detective genre can leave you so affected, that book is truly something special. There are so many great moments in this book; the plot develops at a flawless pace, and every character is pitch-perfect and memorable. And I love the way the Patrick and Angie get so involved that the case affects them personally, taking over their lives, challenging everything they believe in. All of this helps to rank this book as one of the best novels in modern crime fiction, right up there on my list with Clockers, A Simple Plan, The 25th Hour, and the author's other masterwork, Mystic River.

[|| لالي پاپ || · Rating 5 out of 5]

خب!این چهارمین رمانی بود که از دنیس لیهان خوندم و واقعا به معنای واقعی کلمه ازش لذت بردم.این بشر توی نوشتن داستان های جنایی-معمایی یه اعجوبه به تمام معناس!شخصیت پردازی ها بی نقص بود و من واقعا عاشقشون شدم و نمیدونم چی بگم که حق مطلب رو ادا کنم......برای تمام لحظاتی که به مجبور بودم کتاب رو ببندم حرص خوردم چون تمام سلولای بدنم به علامت سوال تبدیل شده بودن.....بخونید و لذت ببرید ازیه داستان بی نقص

[Chelsea ✨Arielle’s Nebular Ally and Team Acrux✨ · Rating 4 out of 5]

*4.5 stars*

Love like that? Hell. It seems so pure, it's damn near criminal.

Soooo....I've missed my Angie and Patrick, I'm not guna lie. So when I got the empty feelings one usually gets after finishing a fantastic book and not knowing what to read, I started to get an ache that couldn't be filled by anything other than a beautifully flawed and tortured detective and his snarky partner in crime. See, there are only 6 books and I decided to break them up so I didn't lose them all at once....I'm so happy I did this now.

The silence of the dead says, Goodbye.
The silence of the missing says, Find me.

I don't know what I could say that hasn't already been said on my part, but I feel like this story deserves a review, ya know? It feels wrong that I wouldn't give voice to one of my new favorite series that I occupy a lot of time daydreaming about. But, in many ways, it's hard to review multiple stories pertaining to one series, and even harder when you hit one in the series that just....isn't as good. Now, the funny thing here?? This book was still excellent. We still had my wonderful Patrick, asshole Angie (sorry, but she is a total snark-monster (which I love)), Bubba, and a deep mystery that keeps you enthralled until the final page...but I just didn't feel during the mystery.

We were slippery creatures, our impulses ruled by a variety of forces, many of them incomprehensible even to ourselves.

Maybe that makes me a monster, maybe I am, indeed, in the minority on this one, and maybe I should have loved this way more than I did. But after the excellence of Darkness, Take My Hand and Sacred, this story fell flat for me. Less action, less investment on my part, and just a lack of depth I'm so very used to with these mysteries. Now, when I say I didn't feel as much, I mean I didn't have any leads as to who it was, I didn't really freak out when something would happen (aside from that horrid house scene which was just.....nightmare inducing...) and I just...wanted a serial killer story or a deceptive siren woman to come back so I could be engrossed in a different way. All in all? I didn't like the story line. Awesome ending...but the mystery fell flat for me, which is the total opposite of everyone on GR, it seems.

I moved over and she sat beside me. She took my face in her hands, but I couldn't meet her eyes, was sure that seeing the warmth and the love in them would make me feel more soiled, for some reason, more unhinged.
She kissed my forehead and then my eyelids, the tears drying on my face, brought my head down to her shoulder, and kissed the back of my neck.

Patrick, despite the gravity of this case, is in a good place. He's happy...he's with the girl he's been in love with since he was a kid and they are happily living with one another. But, and this is a big but (hehe), they have been through hell and back..and it shows. They only take little cases and they avoid matters like this. It's not good for them-it weighs heavily on their minds and souls, and they've seen enough darkness to last them a lifetime. They just want to be happy. But what happens when a desperate Aunt won't take no for an answer. What happens when the issue at hand hits you right in the gut..what happens when taking this case might lead to the ultimate sacrifice of your happiness?

"I don't know what to say," she whispered.
"Nothing to say." I cleared my throat, wrapped my arms around her abdomen and lower back. I could hear her heart beating. She felt so good, so beautiful, so everything that was right in the world. And I still felt like dying."

I feel for them...I really do. Because I could never turn down that case. Ever. So, anyway. I don't think there's a whole lot more to say. It's simple: This series is epic, the stories draw you in no matter the content, even if it's not your favorite, and the characters leave you aching for them and desperate for more. I'm sad, really, I have to wait so long in between so I can find that ultimate enjoyment...but it's for my own good and....sigh...fine...I will be strong.

At the end of an April day, after the sun has descended but before night has fallen, the city turns a hushed, unsettled gray. Another day has died, always more quickly than expected. Muted yellow or orange lights appear in window squares and shaft from car grilles, and the coming dark promises a deepening chill.

For more of my reviews, please visit:








**************************


I figured it would be fun to list my favorites in order until I find time to write a review:

Darkness, Take My Hand
Sacred
Gone, Baby, Gone
A Drink Before the War

It might come as a shock to y'all that this book is one of my least favorites...well, the story just didn't compare.

Review to come.

[Maziyar Yf · Rating 3 out of 5]

دنیس لیهان آشکارا دغدغه کودکان را دارد ،کودکان گم شده را ، کودکانی که در خانواده هایی فقیر به دنیا می آیند و با والدین الکلی و بی مسئولیت بزرگ می شوند ، مانند دِیو در کتاب رودخانه میستیک اگر هم پیدا شوند اثرات آن اسارت چند روزه لعنتی و نگاه سخت و بی رحم مردم محلی همواره با آنان است واگر هم پیدا نشوند سرگذشت آنها سالیان سال درس عبرتی برای کودکان آن شهر خواهند بود .
لیهان به قدری مساله کودکان را در کتاب رودخانه میستیک با قدرت طرح کرده که خواندن کتاب رفته عزیزم رفته در مقام مقایسه با آن ، اثری سطحی و فاقد عمق و اثر گذاری لازم است . در حقیقت آنچه در کتاب بیشتر به چشم می خورد بیشتر تلاش برای یافتن کودک است ، نویسنده کاری به دلایل اجتماعی و یا پرورشی ندارد ، او داستانی پلیسی را بیان می کند که پیچیدگی ها و چرخشهای لازم برای سرگرم ساختن مخاطب را دارد اما با پایان کتاب ، اثرآن هم تمام شده و خواننده به آسانی آنرا فراموش خواهد کرد .

[Paula K · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terrific dialog. Excellent book. Saw the movie back when and enjoyed. Recommend reading.

[Fred · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mystery, Crime & Thriller - Sept. 2017 Group Read

IMDb - credit to Dennis Lehaane for movie
Youtube - Miramax Movie Trailer (2007)

Aunt Beatrice & Uncle Lionel hire Patrick Kenzie & Angie Gennaro to find their niece Amanda(4). They say Helene(Amanda's mom) leaves her alone almost every night - "Gone, Baby, Gone". Lt.Jack Doyle says his Boston Police detectives are enough help.

Patrick/Angie & Det.Remy begin search. Lionel tells them he heard Helene & "Skinny" Ray talk about a NH $200,000 "Drug" money run for "Chesse" Olamon. Helene says she saw Kimmie/WeeDavid were together on the "kidnap" night. They are found dead with a note "Gtwo hundred + composure = child".

"Cheese" wants his money back. Money is found behind Kimmie/WeeDavid's. A failed setup with "Cheese" at a Quarry for the money/Amanda swap fails - 2 people killed. Money & Amanda not found, she is now pronounced dead. Jack Doyle resigned running a department dedicated to children.

The ending could have been better. Det.Remy, Lionel & Doyle wanted a better life for Amanda. Did a "kidnap" setup get them $200,000 to split & Amanda a better life? Or Amanda may just be returned and money lost?!

[Hossein · Rating 3 out of 5]

داستان فضا سازی خوبی داشت اما معمولی تر از اونی بود که فکر میکردم.
یک مشکل کسانی که داستان های جنایی دوست دارن اینه که هر چی بیشتر میخونن با ایده های بیشتری آشنا میشن و همین باعث میشه کتاب های جدید، کمتر جذاب به نظر برسه.
2.5/5

[Amos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Totally engrossing and completely heartbreaking. Ouch.

4 1/2 Bittersweet Stars

[Karl Marberger · Rating 5 out of 5]

This I found to be a surprisingly good read. It’s rare that a suspense thriller actually evokes an emotional response from me.

[Brandon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Patrick and Angie have led rough careers as private investigators and after the events in Sacred, they’ve decided to pull back a little. When we catch up with them in Gone Baby Gone, they’ve all but sworn off cases that could lead to violence, death and destruction. Unfortunately for them, when young Amanda McCready goes missing, Amanda’s grieving Aunt and Uncle are persistent in their requests for the detectives’ help.

Patrick and Angie aren’t sure they’ll be able to offer much up in the way of help. The Boston PD have been working around the clock trying to find Amanda and with her face plastered all over the city, every citizen will have their eyes peeled. There’s also the matter of the girl’s mother, Helene. To put it simply, she’s a burnout. She spends all her time glued to the TV, strung-out on drugs and alcohol. In fact, her negligence was the direct cause of Amanda’s disappearance. Patrick and Angie team up with Crimes Against Children (CAC) officials Remy Broussard and Nick Poole. The foursome work together to turn Boston upside down.

If you thought Darkness, Take My Hand was a tough read, Gone Baby Gone will rip your heart out. Patrick and Angie are put through the proverbial thresher, their lives and relationships come under unbelievable strain as they desperately try to recover the missing girl. While the body count isn’t on the level of the first few novels, the tension is tight and unrelenting.

If anything, Lehane can write a hell of a page-turner. Gone Baby Gone is a visceral read that I wouldn’t recommend for those with a weak stomach or who deal well with child abuse in fiction. But I would argue it’s an important read, if only that it questions morality and what it means to “do the right thing”.

[Terence M [on a brief semi-hiatus] · Rating 3 out of 5]

3-Stars - "I (sort of) Liked It"
Gone, Baby, Gone (Kenzie & Gennaro, #4) by Dennis Lehane
Audiobook - 10:41 Hours - Narrated by Jonathan Davis
@ 71% shelved as: 'paused-try-again' (possible but unlikely)

Despite its 4 and 5-Stars ratings by a number of friends and followed, unfortunately I did get tired of this audiobook. I appreciate that it was a example of "dark" and "noirish" crime novels, but I am not really into "Noir" at all.

At first the accents of the narrator, Jonathan Davis, (who sounded to me like Joe "just the facts, ma'am" Friday, played by Jack Webb in the original Dragnet), were a little hard for this Aussie to understand. Once I got used to the narration, I began to enjoy the story, but in the end it all started to wear thin for me. I looked at all the brand new books on my "Currently Reading" shelf and decided to cut my losses.

Published in 1998, a "Books on Tape" production was released at around the same time. The original cassettes were used later to produce an audiobook of 16 MP3 files of around 45 minutes each, corresponding to 8 double-sided cassettes. This audiobook, the one I stopped listening to, included the messages: "... this is the end of side one, turn the cassette over to listen to side two", etc., with all the scratchy background noises included. I was unable to dig up a later version online.

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

In Gone, Baby, Gone you really get a taste of darkness and an overdose of evil. I finished the book a couple of weeks ago, but this was a book that actually was so awful to read, the first Lehane book I had to read in phases, not right through because it was sometimes too awful to read. I also waited a while to write the review. Sometimes dwelling in darkness isn't that nice and after Gone, Baby, Gone I just wanted to read easy things and watch fun things on TV.

Rating the book was also hard. I gave the book 4.5 stars after I finished the book, but after thinking it through these weeks after finishing the book, have I decided to give the four instead, knock off a half star more. I found the book too dark and disturbing for my taste. I hate reading books when children get hurt and for instance, the pedophile part of the books was horrific.

[Hanneke · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a truly enjoyable thriller! Well written, non-conformist private detectives, villainous police officers, trustworthy criminals and above all a very good story. So, there you go, I found a new detective writer whose book I enjoyed immensely. Dennis Lehane, you acquired a new fan! I will read all his detective stories over the next years.

[Anushka · Rating 5 out of 5]

First time. It’s the first time a thriller has made me cry.

I mean, you don’t shed tears while reading these books, you read one then you read another one. But not this one. No, this one is going to haunt me for a long time, like all Dennis Lehane books do. I still think about Mystic River and feel a chill run down my spine.

Gone, Baby, Gone dealt with some very sensitive issues wrapped in a blanket of controversial subjects. Kidnapping is a topic that is bound to make you emotionally invested but in no book I’ve ever read, it was done with such explicitness. All the gory details were mentioned for which I took about 5 to 10 seconds to digest and move forward. This book repeatedly tests the grey area of what’s legal and what’s moral, what you are supposed to do and what you should do.

It is a well-plotted mystery with various number of plot twists that leads up to a galvanizing climax but the other part of the story comes back to stare at your face again and again. What is right and what is wrong and who gets to decide that, who is the better judge of all things good or bad in this world.

Extremely thought provoking, emotionally stimulating with all the characteristics of a good thriller, this book deserves 5 stars without putting any thought.

In the end, I hope the incidents mentioned here were all fictitious, please do not tell me that this happens in real life to little kids but that is the whole point of this book. Still, I pray that no one goes through this trauma in their lives, it is unfair and no one deserves this!

Recommended to all.
Now I’m off to watch the movie, which I’ve heard it’s as good as the book and order some more books by Lehane.