Saturday 1 November 2014

Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane

Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amanda McCready was four years old when she vanished from a Boston neighborhood twelve years ago. Desperate pleas for help from the child's aunt led investigators Kenzie and Gennaro to take on the case. The pair risked everything to find the young girl—only to orchestrate her return to a neglectful mother and a broken home.

Now Amanda is sixteen—and gone again. A stellar student, brilliant but aloof, she seemed destined to escape her upbringing. Yet Amanda's aunt is once more knocking on Patrick Kenzie's door, fearing the worst for the little girl who has blossomed into a striking, clever young woman—a woman who hasn't been seen in weeks.

Haunted by their consciences, Kenzie and Gennaro revisit the case that troubled them the most. Their search leads them into a world of identity thieves, methamphetamine dealers, a mentally unstable crime boss and his equally demented wife, a priceless, thousand-year-old cross, and a happily homicidal Russian gangster. It's a world in which motives and allegiances constantly shift and mistakes are fatal.

In their desperate fight to confront the past and find Amanda McCready, Kenzie and Gennaro will be forced to question if it's possible to do the wrong thing and still be right or to do the right thing and still be wrong. As they face an evil that goes beyond broken families and broken dreams, they discover that the sins of yesterday don't always stay buried and the crimes of today could end their lives.

**********


This is the end, beautiful friend
This is the end, my only friend, the end – The Doors


So here we are, the last Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro book published. And by the tone of this book, I would say that Lehane has written the last book about the couple. Yes, I know Patrick shows up in FaceOff, but that story takes place before this story and is a short story.

I found it quite suitable that the last book is a kind of continuation for Gone, Baby, Gone with Patrick and Angie once again trying to find Amanda McCready who once again is missing. It’s been twelve years since they found her and brought her back home, a right thing to do according to the law. But was it the right thing to do for Amanda? Hardly! But she is doing ok; she has great grades despite that her mother is still a worthless drunk. So where is she? Once again is it Amanda’s aunt that reaches out to Patrick and Angie to find her.

This is a good ending to the series. You can feel it reading in the book that both Patrick and Angie are sick and tired of the life they have lived. Patrick is the only one still working as a detective, Angie is studying and they are now married with a daughter. This is really the last case they work together.

The case in the book was a bit weak I think. I like it when Lehane turns everything upside down, sure surprising things happen, but not the shocking kind of surprises. More the kind that makes you go “Oh that makes sense,” not the “wtf what just happened?” I prefer Lehane when he just pulls the rug from under one's feet, several times during a book.

But it was still a good book. And even though I will miss them I think that Lehane has written a good ending to Patrick and Angie. I hope they will have a great fictional life together.

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