Dennis Lehane Moonlight Mile

[Giovanni Gelati]

The work keeps piling up and I continue to discover authors who are new to me. After reading their novels I itch to read their back catalog and enjoy all that I can with a new found friend. Dennis Lehane has done that
for me with his two excellent characters Patrick and Angie. Just so I am
keeping the facts straight here is a list of his other novels that I was
clueless on except one, Shutter Island: A Drink Before the War, Darkness, Take
My Hand, Sacred, Gone Baby Gone, Prayers for Rain, Mystic River, Coronado:
Stories , and The Given Day.

I am meeting Patrick and Angie for the first time in this novel so please forgive me. I am a sucker for good characters and when they are a detective team, it is double the pleasure for me. I can see why so many of Lehane’s
novels have become movies. I am planning on reading the novels first, then
seeing the movies. Back to Moonlight Mile: This is a continuation of the story
of Amanda, the four year old they saved in a previous novel. Here is the
synopsis of the novel: “Now Amanda is sixteen- and gone again. A stellar
student, brilliant but aloof, she seemed destined to escape her upbringing. Yet
Amanda’s aunt is once more knocking at Kenzie’s door, fearing the worst for the
little girl who has blossomed into a striking, bright young woman who hasn’t
been seen in two weeks. Haunted by the past, Kenzie and Gennaro revisit the
case that troubled them the most, following a twelve- year trail of secrets and
lies down the darkest alleys of Boston’s gritty ,blue collar streets.”

I was sucked in right from the beginning of the novel. Lehane does a very nice job of building the tension and quickening the pulse of the action to a point that things seem like they are going to explode. As this
is my first read of his work, I can say that it was a mighty hello and I have
to give him a hearty thank you very much. Moonlight Mile kicked butt from cover
to cover. The story is very hard to get away from, literally and figuratively,
it stayed with me for a while. I like that: disposable mindless fiction is good
on occasion, but a nice piece of work like this is always a keeper.

Shutter Island was intense also, you can check out our archives from a Graphic Novel Friday for that post. The consistency in his writing makes me want to read the rest of work as well as his innate ability to
build so much tension in his narratives. Not having read the first novel that
this is connected to, I didn’t feel that I was left out of anything. Lehane
fleshed out the characters and really brought them to life for me. I see no downside from giving this novel a
read, except if you haven’t read much of his previous work like me, then you
just added a bunch of novels to your to read list.

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