Tag Archives: Dennis Lehane Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro

Lehane’s ‘Live By Night’ a good gangster tale

I’ve long declared my love for author Dennis Lehane’s hard-boiled, heart-on-his-sleeve Boston crime novels, especially his series based on private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro.

I was less fond of Lehane’s “The Given Day,” a look at the troubled Coughlin family of Boston in the 1910s. Father Tom was a crooked cop whose sons got into no end of cops-and-robbers misadventures.

So I didn’t know what to expect from “Live by Night,” Lehane’s follow-up that takes up the story of Joe Coughlin, the son who decided to pursue a career as an outlaw – in reality, gangster – in 1920s Boston.

Joe Coughlin is an appealing protagonist, despite his life of crime and because of his moral code. He steals, sure, but there are lines he won’t cross.

Unfortunately for Joe, one line he will cross is the common sense barrier that might have kept him from hitting on the girlfriend of a prominent Boston gangster.

Just when it looks like “Live by Night” will be a standard tale of cops and crooks on the streets of Boston, Lehane gives the plot a twist. Joe ends up in prison, his father ends up a piteous figure and, before we’re done, the action takes us to rough-and-tumble Tampa and Havana.

“Live By Night” has some good characters and a slightly episodic plot. Antagonists slide in and out of the story in a manner that ultimately really does make sense, even if it doesn’t seem to at the time.

Lehane has a great ear for cops and bad guys, even those from generations ago.

“Live By Night” is good crime fiction, good drama and a bittersweet look at family, love and damn bad luck.

Grimm P.I. Tales: The early work of Dennis Lehane

A decade ago, “Mystic River” became a best-selling, highly praised novel for its author, Dennis Lehane, and changed the way the public perceived him – and maybe the way he perceived himself.

His previous books, revolving around the Boston private investigator duo of Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro, were met with awards and acclaim. The first, “A Drink Before the War,” won the Shamus Award, one of the highest accolades for published mysteries. But the acclaim that greeted “Mystic River” elevated Lehane out of the ranks of typical crime novel writers.

Too bad.

While I liked “Mystic River” and, to some extent, “Shutter Island,” which came out two years later, in 2003, it is Lehane’s early work, the gritty and often downbeat series of novels about Kenzie and Gennaro, that remain my favorites.

A few weeks ago I mentioned that I was indulging in my irregular habit of re-reading the Patrick and Angie books. Along with other summertime reading, I’ve re-read the first three books in the series and thought I’d give you a quick rundown.

By all means, if you read the books – and they’re very rewarding, if very dark – read them in order.

“A Drink Before the War,” published in 1994, opened the series in fine form with Kenzie and Gennaro running their PI office out of a borrowed bell tower in a Catholic church in the blue-collar Dorchester neighborhood. Yes, I know, it sounds gimmicky, like something out of a TV show, and there’s a bit of a formula feel to the setup.

But “A Drink Before the War” is anything but a predictable, feel-good story, as Kenzie and Gennaro are hired by a group of politicians to find a statehouse cleaning lady who’s disappeared with some important documents.

Before long, the two find that everything isn’t what it seems, of course. Class and race tensions thoroughly permeate the action.

The book introduces not only the PIs but the cops in their neighborhood, the criminals – including Bubba, lifelong friend of Patrick and Angie and one of the most dangerous men to walk the streets of Boston – and Phil, Angie’s husband.

While Patrick is a smart ass not unlike Robert Parker’s Spenser – albeit with a dark, dark background – Angie is a complicated character. Phil is a wife-beater. He was once one of Patrick’s closest friends. Now Patrick has to tread lightly around Angie’s awful marriage out of fear of what might happen. Angie, like many victims, doesn’t know how or even seem to want to break free from her hellish life. Patrick has learned the hard way that he can’t interfere.

Before the book ends, Patrick and Angie will jump into harm’s way to right wrongs and expose the truth.

If “A Drink Before the War” seemed dark, the second Lehane book, 1996’s “Darkness, Take My Hand,” proved to be even more so.

When a sadistic killer begins plying his trade around their neighborhood, Patrick and Angie find themselves drawn into a mystery that dates back decades, to separate but equally unholy alliances among killers and among neighborhood vigilantes.

Unlike many crime thrillers, “Darkness, Take My Hand” emphasizes the toll that fear and violence takes on the lives of people who live with it every day.

The story climaxes in one of the most harrowing showdowns I’ve ever read.

Lehane’s third Kenzie and Gennaro story, “Sacred,” is probably the weakest of the original series of books but still a good read. Published in 1997, “Sacred” finds Patrick and Angie hired to find the missing daughter of one of New England’s richest men. It’s a departure from their typical story of Boston’s meanest streets and, to its debit, really could be about any male-female private eye partnership.

I haven’t yet dipped back into Lehane’s fourth book and the best-known of his non-“Mystic River” books, “Gone, Baby, Gone.” The 1998 book – made into a pretty good movie in 2007 by director Ben Affleck – might be Lehane’s best. I’ve read it several times and I’m looking forward to reading it and its 1999 follow-up, “Prayers for Rain,” in the coming weeks. When I do, I’ll note it here.

I’ll also talk about how Lehane’s writing goals seemed to change after “Mystic River” was a hit in 2001 and why his work has been very different since.

Favorite authors: Dennis Lehane wages ‘War’

I’m pretty relentless in my appetite for new books. When I was a kid, I would go back and read and re-read books by my favorite authors, including Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein and Kurt Vonnegut.

But these days I’m always trying new authors or devouring everything by a newly-discovered favorite like Craig Johnson or Ace Atkins.

But every year or so, I dip back into the work of Dennis Lehane.

Considering how damn dark much of Lehane’s work is, it’s hard to imagine how it could feel like comfort food to me, but it does. Not so much “Mystic River” or “Shutter Island,” although I liked those (the former quite a bit).

No. When I want to relive my favorite Lehane experience, I jump back into his series of novels about working-class Boston private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro.

The fourth book in the Kenzie and Gennaro series, “Gone, Baby, Gone,” was made into a pretty good movie in 2007 by director Ben Affleck. Not all of the novel’s grim appeal made it onto the big screen, but quite a bit did.

So now that I’m between new books to read, I’m starting the Kenzie and Gennaro series over again with the first, 1994’s “A Drink Before the War.”

If you’ve never read Lehane’s Patrick and Angie series, I’d highly recommend it. But you really have to read them from the beginning.

Lehane takes his characters, including not only the PI partners but their friends like Bubba, the former-Marine-turned-weapons-dealer-nutcase, through some pretty big – you might say dire – changes during the course of the series.

“A Drink Before the War” opens with Patrick and Angie working out of their customary office, the empty bell tower of a Boston Catholic church. Patrick is a smartass with a gooey center. Angie is a beautiful hellraiser with an awful home life.

The two accept a case working for some legislators and their toadies trying to find a statehouse cleaning woman who’s disappeared with some supposed “documents.”

Lehane gets to the nitty gritty quickly, touching on Patrick’s hellish childhood at the hands of his father, a now-deceased firefighter regarded as a homegrown Boston hero, and Angie’s regular beatings at the hands of Phil, her husband and Patrick’s childhood friend.

Patrick, of course, is deeply in love with Angie and seethes when he sees how Phil treats her. Patrick learned the hard way, though, about trying to intercede on Angie’s behalf.

The book manages to touch on class warfare, race relations and marital discord in a plot that’s liberally sprinkled with humor.

Make no mistake, however: Lehane’s vision of his characters is dark, dark, dark. Dark, I tells ya. It’s hard not to love Patrick and Angie and hard not to ache for the troubles that befall them.

But Lehane’s Kenzie and Gennaro books more than make the heartache worthwhile.

I’m planning to touch on the series here over the next few weeks. Pick up the series and follow along if you will.

But remember: Read them in order: “A Drink Before the War,” “Darkness Take My Hand,” “Sacred,” “Gone, Baby, Gone” and “Prayers for Rain.”

I can’t totally endorse Lehane’s 2010 return to the characters after more than a decade’s absence, “Moonlight Mile.” But we’ll get to that later.

Have fun!