Country: USA
Genre: Literary/Noir
Pages: 324
Every two or three years, I'm like a kid on Christmas Eve for the last few days before Dennis Lehane publishes a novel. The Bostonian writer has been a personal favorite since I read Mystic River around 2004. His detail-oriented character development and his nose for human drama make his crime stories stand out from the genre like a .50 cal in a paintball game. He's that good. If his 2008 epic The Given Day left me a bit disappointed with its overbearing intellectual aim, I couldn't see how Moonlight Mile could go wrong. Lehane put his feet back in old and comfortable slippers as he gave a final run to his trademark P.I couple Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro.
Moonlight Mile is the sequel to Gone Baby Gone. Twelve years after Amanda's kidnapping, she disappears...again. A lot changed since then. Patrick and Angie are married and they have a daughter, Gabriella. They aren't the fearless P.I team anymore. Angie is working full time on a master degree and Patrick is freelancing for a security firm called Duhamel-Standiford. Their preoccupations shifted from avoiding getting shot to paying bills. When Bea McCready contacts Patrick to find back Amanda, he's going to have the opportunity to right a previous wrong...even if he's still convinced he did the right thing. He will get on the trail of Amanda, a girl oh-so full of surprises...
It's a wonderful feeling to renew with Kenzie, Angela and Bubba, the most sympathetic psychopath in contemporary literature (and believe me guys, Bubba is IN SHAPE). Moonlight Mile addresses themes such as regrets, responsibilities and dealing with the past. In Lehane's most peculiar style, it's a novel that is a celebration of family life as much as a dark crime novel. Kenzie has a lot more to lose than his life, which ups the ante for a man in his forties, who took the job to reconcile himself with the past first and foremost. It gives a feeling of urgent actuality to a story who sparks nostalgia for Kenzie as much as it does for the reader.
I'm not expecting any other Kenzie-Gennaro novel after this one. Moonlight Mile is a memorable send off and they deserve to walk away in the sunset with their little girl. Published eleven years after Prayer For The Rain, the characters have slowed down and aren't as preoccupied and intense as they once were. Moonlight Mile is not as gritty and involved as the series once was, but it's evident the book is an attempt to give the characters proper closure. I guess this is what annoyed me the most. Patrick and Angela are so self-involved, they get tiring. Amanda is the center piece of the story and the way Lehane portrays her makes her look like a neato Lisbeth Salander. And those who read/watched Millenium know that the main charm of Salander is the "broken kid" vibe that she gives, which Amanda fails at. She's too strong to look broken.
Moonlight Mile is a great addition and a great closure to the series that made Dennis Lehane big time. It's not as gripping and complex as Darkness, Take My Hand or as intense as Prayer For The Rain, but it scores as much as Gone Baby Gonee or A Drink Before The War. I've enjoyed the hell out of it and now that I'm done, I'm really excited that Lehane can move on to bigger things.
