Gone, Baby, Gone

Of all the chilling, completely credible scenes of sadness, destruction and betrayal in Dennis Lehane's fourth and possibly best book about Kenzie and Gennaro, this moment stands out because it captures in a few pages the essence of Lehane's success.

Private detectives Kenzie and Gennaro, who still live in the same working-class Dorchester neighbourhood of Boston, Massachusetts, where they grew up, have gone to visit drug dealer Cheese in prison because they think he's involved the kidnapping of 4-year-old Amanda McCready. Without sentimentalising the grotesque figure of Cheese, Lehane tells us enough about his past to make us understand why he and the two detectives might share enough trust to save a child's life when all the best efforts of traditional law enforcement have failed. By putting Kenzie and Gennaro just to one side of the law (but not totally outside--they have several cop friends--a very important part of the story), Lehane adds depth and edge to traditional genre relationships. The love affair between Kenzie and Gennaro--interrupted by her marriage to his friend--is another perfectly controlled element that grows and changes as we watch. Surrounded by dead, abused and missing children, Kenzie mourns and rages; Gennaro longs for one of her own. The choices made by both of them in the final pages of this absolutely gripping story have the inevitability of life and the dazzling beauty of art.

Other Kenzie/Gennaro books available in paperback are: Darkness, Take My Hand, A Drink Before the War, Sacred. -- Dick Adler (Review copyright Amazon.co.uk)