DENNIS LEHANE – Moonlight Mile. William Morrow, hardcover, November 2010. Harper, premium-sized paperback, July 2011.

Genre:   Private Investigator. Leading characters:  Patrick Kenzie & Angie Gennaro; 6th in series. Setting:   Massachusetts.

First Sentence:   On a bright, unseasonably warm afternoon in early December, Brandon Trescott walked out of the spa at the Chatham Bars Inn on Cape Cod and got into a taxi.

   Eleven years ago, as told in Gone, Baby, Gone (1999), Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro found kidnapped Amanda McCredy and, following the law, returned her to her neglectful mother.

   Now, at 16, Amanda has disappeared again and her aunt re-hires Kenzie and Gennaro to find her. A missing-person case quickly escalates to one involving identity theft, drugs, a priceless cross, Russian gangsters and a threat on Patrick’s family.

   It is very nice to have back the characters that brought Lehane to forefront of mystery writing. It is also nice that their lives have evolved and that they are parents of a quite realistic, four-year old daughter.

   I also enjoyed having back Bubba, one of the best psychotic sidekicks ever, but his role felt a bit as though it was playing homage to Robert B. Parker’s characters of Hawk to Susan; protector but not participant. While Amanda had dimension and strength, others seemed flat and bordering on stereotypical.

   Lehane has a great voice which carries over to a natural ear for dialogue and his evocative descriptions set the mood and sense of place… “The trees were bare […], and cold air off the ocean hunted the gaps in my clothes.”

   The plot was page-turning with some very well-done, unexpected twists, the climax felt over the top, and I did like the ending. Lehane again addresses the struggle between doing what is legally correct versus morally correct and who has the right to make that decision.

   Reading this book was interesting. When I read A Drink Before the War, the first book in the series, it was coup de foudre; that lightning strike you may experience when meeting someone wonderful for the first time. Eleven years on, the lightning bolt is gone, but there is still enough of a tingle to say I did enjoy the book.

Rating:   Good.