Tag Archives: The Drop

‘The Drop’ a return to form for Dennis Lehane

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the drop dennis lehane

It’s pretty easy for me to say that Dennis Lehane is one of my favorite writers.

I didn’t really know Lehane until a decade or more ago when I saw the paperback version of his 1994 crime novel, “A Drink Before the War,” on the shelf in a bookstore. A gritty private eye story set in Boston, the book was the first of six books that Lehane wrote about Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro.

Let me wax on about Patrick and Angie for a second if you will.

How to describe Kenzie and Gennaro, partners in a Boston private investigations operation? They’re lifelong friends, very seldom lovers and equals in the tough guy department. Through a series of five incredible books, Lehane leads Patrick and Angie through not only nifty crime stories to rival Robert B. Parker’s Spencer at his best but also through gut-wrenching personal trauma.

That’s because Patrick and Angie are more than lifelong friends and partners. They’re also survivors. During the course of five books, Lehane pits Kenzie and Gennaro Investigations against the worst of the worst: Blackmailers, serial killers and child molesters and exploiters. If you saw the movie of the fourth book in the series, “Gone, Baby, Gone,” you got a taste of the harsh yet rewarding story, characters and atmosphere of the book.

I often tell people – always tell them, really – that they should read Lehane’s Patrick and Angie books if they’re in the mood for dark crime drama. And I tell them that the books are dark. Dark, I tells ya.

And I add that the books MUST be read in order: “A Drink Before the War,” then “Darkness, Take My Hand,” then “Sacred,” then “Gone, Baby, Gone,” then “Prayers for Rain.”

The books are certainly my favorite crime novel series of all time and they very well might be the best such series ever.

You might have noticed that I said Lehane wrote six books about Patrick and Angie but I mentioned “five incredible books.” That’s because “Moonlight Mile,” Lehane’s 2010 return to the characters after 11 years, was so disappointing. I wanted Patrick and Angie to come back for so many years … and then read “Moonlight Mile” and understood why Lehane had stopped writing the characters before – I’m guessing – being encouraged to come back by demand from fans like me and a big check from his publisher.

dennis lehane

Lehane has certainly written some other terrific thrillers, including “Shutter island” and the very nearly without peer “Mystic River.” If you know those two books – unrelated to the Patrick and Angie books – only from their movie adaptations, do yourself a favor and read the books.

Which brings me to “The Drop,” which is the return to Boston’s mean streets that “Moonlight Mile” just couldn’t be.

“The Drop” – written by Lehane from his own screenplay for a movie that ultimately starred Tom Hardy and James Gandolfini – is the story of Bob, a kind-hearted but lonely Boston bartender working for his distant cousin at his cousin’s bar … which is secretly owned by Chechen mobsters.

After decades of a lonely existence, Bob begins to come out of his shell when he meets Nadia and, with her help, rescues a dog that had been dumped in a trash can. But there’s more to Nadia and the dog than Bob understands at first. Just like there’s more to the the low-life types who circle on the edges of his world, including a menacing stranger who insists that Bob has taken his dog.

“The Drop” isn’t a long book and doesn’t have a complex plot. although there are some twists and turns. It’s a straightforward tale of a likable joe who wants to improve his life – if he doesn’t get killed first.

Best of all, “The Drop” is a great return to the Lehane’s Boston, a world of hustlers and thugs and forces that can come at anyone sideways and change their lives for the better or the worse.

Michael Connelly’s ‘The Drop’ has twists and turns

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Michael Connelly, a Los Angeles newspaper reporter turned writer, has become something of a brand name among authors of crime novels. Connelly, who seems as cool as his star characters, Harry Bosch and Mickey Haller, could probably say how many New York Times bestsellers he’s written. Not that he needs to. For many readers, all they need to know is that Connelly is the guy who wrote “The Lincoln Lawyer.”

That book, about street-smart Los Angeles defense attorney Haller, has had a few sequels now and been turned into a pretty good movie. The success of the Haller books almost threatens to eclipse Connelly’s best and most accomplished character, L.A. police detective Bosch.

That might be because Bosch is anything but cuddly. The son of a murdered prostitute, the tough Vietnam veteran is nearing the end of his law enforcement career as “The Drop,” Connelly’s latest novel, begins.

The title refers to a process through which LAPD cops can pick their “drop” date, or retirement date, and Bosch — worried that he’s losing his skills as well as losing an opportunity to connect with his 15-year-old daughter — puts in for his. He signs up for retirement and looks at a little more than two years on the force.

Bosch, a veteran of the LAPD’s homicide squad, is currently working on cold cases for the department and applies himself to each new cold case — usually sparked by a DNA hit or some other fresh development — with the same single-minded drive he brought to new homicides.

Bosch and his often-callow partner, David Chu, are handed a cold case that seems impossible: A DNA match from a 20-year-old murder points to a local man as a suspect. But the the man was only eight years old at the time of the slaying. The suspect is a sex offender, but how could he have been involved in the homicide when he was still a child?

The title also refers to the fatal fall suffered by an L.A. man who happens to be the son of Bosch’s old nemesis, Irvin Irving, a police bureaucrat turned city council member. Bosch clashed with Irving on earlier cases, so why would the councilman ask Bosch to investigate his son’s death? Is Bosch being set up to prove that a case that looks like a suicide was really a homicide?

Bosch is his typically blunt, laser-focused self in “The Drop” and, while the cop’s personality makes him fascinating it also, truthfully, makes him kind of hard to like. Granted, I’d want a cop of Bosch’s demeanor investigating the slaying of a loved one. But I wouldn’t want to be his partner or superiors or pretty much anybody around, because Bosch is really, really good — despite his concerns that he’s losing his touch — and doesn’t hesitate to steamroller over anyone that stands between him and closing a case.

In his recent books, Connelly has mixed his wide-ranging L.A. cast, with Bosch appearing in Haller books and Haller appearing in Bosch books. There’s little of that going on here. Fans of Haller will enjoy a late-in-the-book reference to one of the best characters from those stories, though.

“The Drop” is, like most of Connelly’s work, the kind of story that almost demands you read it quickly once you’ve begun. The story, thanks to Harry Bosch’s driven personality, propels itself forward. It’s a fast-moving read with a development near the end that feels more like a lurch than a twist. But Bosch isn’t thrown for a loop. He goes with the twist and brings readers — happily and willingly — along.