At the urgings of my b-in-l Gavin, I have finally started reading Dennis Lehane's first effort at historical fiction: The Given Day. Set in the early part of the 20th Century, this book includes real-life historical figures like Babe Ruth, the famous baseball player, as well as political figures of the day. I haven't gotten very far yet but Lehane's description of the Babe watching a negro-league baseball game (complete with the historically accurate but now considered offensive terminology to describe the black ball-players) is quite exceptional.

I am looking forward to reading more but have so many other projects on the go (including Christmas, of course, and other related tasks) that it may take me some time to finish the book. I'm hopeful that it will be more about the history and less about blood and gore than some of his other books but we'll see.

In the meantime, of course, I continue work on the Harry Potter Concordance. It's slow work but I'm thoroughly enjoying it. I've set up a table and computer downstairs in what we call our "White Room" so that I can leave the stuff out, ready for me to come back to it whenever I have a chance. Our dog likes that room too since it's nice and cool and she has plenty of space to lie down and sleep.

I have also finished another Abigail Massey at McAdam Station story — The Circus Comes to Town — available through the McAdam link to the left. Right now, it's still a bit of a draft since I'm not entirely sure I like the relationship between Miss Pierce and her brother. I'm awaiting feedback from my sister, mother and partner to see what they think.

And I really have to get back to the Phillip Gold short stories I've been working on; they've kind of gotten left behind but one is ready to be sent out for consideration. I think that's a worthwhile cause upon which to focus in the coming weeks.

Especially with snow falling and Christmas looming!

Tags: Lehane, Harry Potter, McAdam Station, Abigail Massey

I've given up trying to write a review for Sacred, Dennis Lehane's third novel featuring the detective duo of Kenzie and Gennaro. Why? Because I am so disappointed with it I find it hard to think clearly.

With apologies to Gavin, this book is a real let down. The plot is so convoluted that, once you figure out what is actually going on, the stuff that happened at the start no longer makes any sense. The theme appears to be that, in this bad old world, you can trust no one. Only K&G can trust each other and they are falling rapidly and everlastingly in love, surrendering to the inevitable. So Kenzie spends much of his time mooning over Gennaro rather than dealing with the case they've taken on. Blah blah blah.

What really bothers me is that Lehane resorts to some pretty shaky strategies in this book. He knows readers want action right from page one but he also knows that, in first-person detective novels that involve searching for a missing person (as this book does), it's really difficult to find a way to start the action before you spend 20 pages or so setting up the case. So he has the client attack and kidnap K&G before hiring them. And we, as readers, are supposed to buy 1) that K&G would be so stupid as to fall into the trap and 2) that after being attacked, drugged and dragged against their will to a remote mansion on the coast, they would actually agree to work for the rich dude and NOT suspect that he might be lying to them.

Lehane also uses Bubba as a way to incorporate ultra-violent scenes without bloodying the hands of his protagonists, with whom we the readers are supposed to identify. Bubba actually tortures people on behalf of K&G and we are supposed to see K&G as a sweet, innocent couple, falling in love while ridding the world of evil. It's ridiculous. K&G are every bit as culpable for the horrific acts Bubba and his buddies perpetrate as they are. K&G are no better than the villains they pursue. Lehane goes to great lengths to show Kenzie lamenting over the fact that, in book one, he actually pulled the trigger in the cold-blooded murder of a defenseless gang-banger, yet then has Kenzie sitting watching Bubba torture K&G's enemies in order to gain information from them.

Lehane's a great writer, don't get me wrong, but he's heading in directions that I find hard to accept. Raymond Chandler's Phillip Marlowe was a solitary knight who took on evil according to his particular code of honour. K&G are just as evil as the people they fight.

And I can't help but draw a parallel between Lehane's new type of anti-hero and the current culture in the US. Just as Bush and his colleagues attempt to justify torture and killing and corruption on the basis that the enemy is even more evil than we are, so too do K&G. What happened to living by your principles no matter what? What happened to honour? How can you justify taking another person to task for their evil deeds when you yourself commit the same evil deeds in pursuing them?

I am frankly scared by what I'm seeing, frightened by how far we have gone as a society towards accepting the argument that the ends justify the means, that as long as what we are seeking fits in with our own biased sense of what's right and what's wrong, we are entitled to take whatever steps we wish, no matter how ugly or morally reprehensible, to accomplish those ends.

Lehane's characters certainly seem to have accepted that. I don't think I can.

Tags: Lehane, Kenzie

Dennis Lehane is my hero. Not only does he write fantastic mysteries — he's now managed to bring Star Trek into the mix. I just started Sacred, his third book, and what do I find on pages three and four of the paperback version? The following dialogue, with the exposition taken out:

"He could be an alien," Angie said. ...

"An alien," I said. "From where exactly? France?" ...

"No, stupid. From the future. Didn't you ever see that old Star Trek where Kirk and Spock ended up on earth in the thirties and were hopelessly out of step?"

"I hate Star Trek." ...

"How can you hate Star Trek?"

Not only does Lehane mention Star Trek, his characters talk about an actual episode of the original series and get it close to right! Amazing.

So Lehane is officially my new hero. Of course, what Kenzie's problem is, I don't know. How can anyone hate Star Trek?

More on Stephen Whitfield's 1968 documentary book, The Making Of Star Trek, soon.

Tags: Lehane, Star Trek

Darkness, Take My Hand is a horrific book. It's bloody, it's nasty but it's a hell of a read.

Dennis Lehane delivers another mind-blowing story featuring detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro. I'll admit it right now — I don't entirely understand what Lehane is trying to do here. There is a level of myth and self-reflexiveness to this book that I can't penetrate. The villains are driven by something deep and psychological but, even after reading the ending twice, I still can't quite figure out what it is. Maybe it's too deep for me. I have enough faith in Lehane as a writer not to doubt him, not to question whether he ever really knew the answer himself. I just can't work it out from what's given in the book.

I can't figure out the link between the villains and the two mobsters, Jack Rouse and Kevin Hurlihy, either.

Oh well.

Kenzie and Gennaro agree to help a beautiful psychiatrist who has been receiving threats, even though they know from the beginning that the case will lead them right into the laps of the nastiest of the nasty from Boston's mob scene. When the mobsters claim innocence, however, our heroes are at a loss for where to turn next. Cruxifictions and other sorts of sadistic, ritualistic murders follow and suddenly Kenzie finds that all the leads connect to him. No, he's not a suspect, but he certainly seems to be at the centre of it all.

Kenzie, now in love with a beautiful doctor and her four-year-old daughter, struggles to protect the innocence of his new family from the violence of his chosen profession. Gennaro, finally divorced from her abusive husband, is spinning, lost. Together, they take on evil forces of the like they never in their wildest nightmares contemplated facing, aided by a flotilla of police and FBI agents.

There's blood on almost every page. And savagery. And sadism. And a little bit of sex thrown in.

Lehane starts with the briefest of chapters, a Prologue that serves as something of a frame for the story. It takes place after the story is over, as Kenzie sits alone on his balcony, watching the snow fall on a cold Christmas Eve. In this three-page passage, Lehane dials up the tension and suspense and, over the following 330 pages, he never lets up. Here are the key paragraphs from that Prologue:

The office — Kenzie/Gennaro Investigations — is closed, gathering dust, I assume, maybe the first stray cobweb in a corner behind my desk, maybe one behind Angie's too. Angie's been gone since the end of November, and I try not to think about her. Or Grace Cole. Or Grace's daughter, Mae. Or anything at all.

And later:

Sometimes Bubba or Richie or Devin or Oscar drop by... We don't talk about this past autumn or Grace and Mae. We don't talk about Angie. And we never talk about him. He's done his damage, and there's nothing left to say.

The words seem mild, simply gentle declarations of loss, of pain. But they haunt the entire book. We as readers carry Kenzie's loss with us as we read the story that led to that scene on the balcony and we know: nothing can't happen in this book. We know that Kenzie survives (as do the more minor characters Bubba, Richie, Devin and Oscar) but we can't be certain of just about anything else.

And the book throws so much at us that it's hard to catch our breath. We bounce from one horrific scene to the next, from one terrifying character to another. Lehane succeeds in creating a claustrophobic climate dominated by the unknown, unseen villains. They are everywhere yet nowhere.

To their credit, Kenzie and Gennaro are smart enough and human enough to be afraid. Very afraid.

Darkness, Take My Hand is a dense, suspenseful, gripping book that engulfs its reader. It picks us up and tosses us around and overwhelms our senses.

My brother-in-law Gavin tells me Lehane's books get better and better — this, his second novel, is so good I'm not sure that's possible.

Tags: Lehane, Mystery, Darkness, Take My Hand

Introduced to the works of Dennis Lehane by my brother-in-law, who thinks the world of him. So I picked up A Drink Before the War, his first novel. Very impressive. I like to read hard-boiled-detective novels by newly successful writers to see what's missing from my writing and, judging by this first effort by Mr. Lehane, the answer is: a lot. Lehane's characters are deep and fully developed, even in this his first novel, and the plot is broad and sweeping, filled with violence. Reading this book, I wonder if he's written three or four prequels that were never published but allowed him to develop both his style and his characters.

Certainly, there were some bits that just seemed a little too trite — like how the protagonist, Patrick, just happens to have friends who can provide him with everything he needs at just the right time (the best lawyer, the buddy with access to an arsenal, the newspaper reporter, etc.) — and certainly the ending is telegraphed but the writing is crisp and impressive.

I have to admit, it does disappoint me that every successful writer I read tends to add credence to the argument that your book has to be bloody and explicit in order to sell. There's no room for a well-written mystery about smaller issues (like a single murder, or a kidnapped child) — you've got to throw in lots of gunfire and fistfights, gang wars and brutal cops. It's sad. I had hoped that there would be a market for plots that are more in line with the writers of the first half of the 20th century whom I so admire.

On the other hand, Lehane is masterful at building suspense. I'm usually quite analytical when I read these kinds of books but he really swept me up. I'm looking forward to picking up the next book in the series. And the next. And the next. And my brother-in-law tells me I just have to see the movie version of Gone Baby Gone.

If I spend so much time reading, when will I have time to hone my own writing?

Tags: Lehane, A Drink Before The War