Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane

Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane
William Morris, 2010, $26.99, 325pps.
ISBN: 978-0-06-183692-3
Book Review by Wayne C. Rogers

This isn’t a horror novel, but it is an excellent read. I’ve been a long-time fan of Dennis Lehane since Darkness, Take My Hand was published in 1996, which was the second novel in the “Patrick Kenzie/Angie Gennaro” series. I enjoyed it so much I immediately found the first novel, A Drink Before the War, and devoured the book in less than two days. Needless to say, I was somewhat disappointed when Mr. Lehane eventually took a break from the series to write other fiction novels such a Mystic River, Shutter Island, and The Given Day. I never thought he would be away from Kenzie and Gennaro for over eleven very long years. To tell you the truth, after several years had passed, I honestly didn’t think he would return to the series that started it all. Some authors start a series and then let it go after four or five books have been published. They want to move on to other things. I can understand that as a writer myself, but as a reader, it’s difficult to let go of fictional characters that have become a part of your life during a period of time.

So, that I was jumping up and down for joy this past summer when I heard the P.I. couple was finally returning this fall in a new novel, Moonlight Mile, doesn’t convey half the excitement of what I was actually feeling. During the following three months I waited for the novel to come out, I read advance reviews of it and was taken aback by some of the negativity that came from book readers. True, some readers loved the book, but there were a lot who didn’t, or felt the novel didn’t measure up to the previous ones in the series. That, however, didn’t stop me from eventually getting a copy of it. Unfortunately, when I started reading it, I did so with trepidation, not wanting to be disappointed in one of my favorite authors. It was only after the first several pages I realized that I liked the book. I really did, and I didn’t want to put it down. By the last page, I felt Moonlight Mile had delivered everything that was promised by the author when he wrote the book. Mr. Lehane knew he was taking a chance with his long-time fans by bringing his two characters back to life. Still, we get to visit with Kenzie and Gennaro again and to see them as an older, married couple with a child, dealing with all the day-to-day necessities for surviving in today’s world and not knowing where the money was going to come from to pay the bills for the next month. This is pretty much what professional writers go through when they attempt to make a living from their fiction and stay on the mid-list of publishers or even lower down the ladder. Being a writer is a lot like being a P.I., except you don’t get shot at. Well, not usually.

Also, after I finished the novel, I tried to understand why so many people hadn’t liked it. What had I seen in the story that they didn’t? Had I enjoyed the book because I’m older and know firsthand what the two characters were going through in their efforts to survive the problems of life? I know everybody has different tastes and what one person likes, another won’t. I still couldn’t’ help but wonder if the Internet and the people who write their two sentences on how much they hate a book has done more harm than good for writers. I guess it’s a tossup. I know how difficult it is to write a novel and how much time it takes to do so, especially a good one. Hell, even a bad book is hard to write. For a person who doesn’t like the novel or the author for whatever reason (of course, I’m assuming they’ve read the novel, but sometimes I’m not so sure) all it takes is one minute to write a couple of negative sentences on Amazon or Barnes and Noble to drop the rating down a notch or two. I and other writers who take their reviews seriously are burned out by the negativity on these websites and think that there are a group of individuals out there who write a few sentences of garbage just to pee on someone’s parade. I don’t think these people spend the money to buy the book or even take the time to read it from the library. They simply scope out the new books or movies coming out and write a short negative comment about them. This gets them off and feeds them with a sense of power that doesn’t come from creating something out of nothing. These are definitely unhappy people.

Anyway, Moonlight Mile finds Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro twelve years later, married with a four-year-old daughter named Gabriel, or Gabby for short. Angie is now a house mom while going to school to work on a college degree. Patrick is still doing private investigation work, but in an on-call position for a top rate surveillance company. The company keeps promising him a full-time position with paid vacation and benefits, but at the same time thinks he doesn’t have the right attitude. His skills as an investigator are admired by them, but the powers that be think Patrick is too much of a blue-collar stiff with hard feelings about the upper crust of society and how the lower class are continuously screwed over by them.

The shift in the story takes place when Beatrice McCready steps back into Patrick’s life, wanting him to find Amanda, who has once again disappeared. Amanda McCready was the four year old in Gone Baby Gone who was kidnapped. The results of the case tore Patrick and Angie’s relationship apart and haunted him for years. Now, he was being asked to find her again. Against his better judgment, but hoping to make amends for the past, Patrick sets out to find Amanda and quickly encounters a score of others who are also after her. The most dangerous of the people seeking Amanda is the Russian mob, which is prepared to kill Patrick and his family if he doesn’t do exactly what they say. Patrick, being Irish and tougher than he looks, basically gives them the middle finger and searches down the girl who changed his life so drastically. Of course, Patrick also has his friend, Bubba, take Gabby to her grandmother’s place in Georgia so the mob can’t get to her, but they can, and they let him know it, too. The questions are how will Patrick deal with the mob once he locates Amanda and why are the Russians after her? What does she have that they want? A lot of people are going to die before the last page is reached so be prepared.

For me, the characters came alive on the pages of this story in a way that makes reading fun. They all rang true to me as living, breathing people as did their dialogue. The questions I had about the Russian mob and why they just didn’t kill Patrick right off the bat were answered by the end of the book, and I didn’t feel cheated by the outcome. I thoroughly enjoyed the aspects about the life Patrick and Angie now have and that they go through the same struggles as everybody else on a daily basis. I should point out that in many ways this book is more about Patrick Kenzie and his need for redemption than about Angie and Bubba or anyone else. I also suspect Mr. Lehane added the four-year-old daughter to the story because he now has a child of his own and totally understands what a parent goes through, both the good and the bad. Let’s just say I liked this novel so much that I ordered the movie version of Gone Baby Gone, staring Casey Affleck as Patrick Kenzie and Michelle Monaghan as Angie Gennaro. I kept seeing them in my mind’s eye as the two characters while reading Moonlight Mile and now I want to revisit the movie and the storyline about Amanda McCready when she was four.

If I have one complaint about Moonlight Mile it’s that William Morris published it with the cheapest binding and flat boards possible. My copy has already started to warp from the humidity in the air. This is a book that should have had much better binding for those who want to keep it and not sell it to a used book store. Other than that, I thought the novel was great, and I sincerely hope Dennis Lehane will not allow this to be the last novel in the series. Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro are two characters I want to see more of before I finally kick the bucket.