For eleven long years, fans of Dennis Lehane have waited for Moonlight Mile, the sixth novel in the Boston-based series featuring private investigators, Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro. During that decade, Lehane's profile and work has been given the Hollywood treatment as successful adaptations of Gone, Baby, Gone (the fourth Kenzie-Gennaro book), Mystic River and Shutter Island has brought his work to millions of new fans and elevated him into US crime-writing aristocracy.
For all that success, however, and the extended range he has shown in novels such as The Given Day and Mystic River, many of us simply yearned for another slice of life on the mean streets of South Boston with the wise-cracking Kenzie and the streetwise Gennaro.
Finally, we have what we wanted: and it was worth the wait. Moonlight Mile is a powerful and arresting mystery story, and one that also confronts questions about growing up and learning to deal with the consequences of the decisions we take in life.
Primarily those questions are asked of Kenzie, who 11 years on is now married (to Gennaro), is a father and is trying desperately to provide for his family by working in the world of corporate security, which is supposed to be a safe harbour from the madness of his previous life as wrong-side-of-the-tracks PI. Kenzie has traded the excitement of a job he loved for the relative security of the corporate world where he is attempting to translate freelance work into a long-term career that will support his young family. He finds the work largely dull and unpalatable and struggles to secure his tenure because of his inability to stop speaking his mind to those who prefer deference to opinion.
With the delicate balance of his life apparently on the line, the last thing Kenzie needs is a visit from the ghost of caseloads past and it is indeed the ghost of caseloads past that turns up: Amanda McCready, the little girl (see Gone, Baby, Gone) abducted from her unstable, broken home by sympathetic cops who put her into a loving and secure family only for Kenzie to find and return her.
When her aunt reports that McReady, now 16, has disappeared yet again, Kenzie in particular revisits the angst and conflict of his original decision - one that still lies heavily on the consciences of both detectives - and he cannot resist an opportunity to revisit the case and look for her again. His quest to find Amanda again leads both himself and his family into a sordid world of crime and punishment where existence on the edge of poverty can lead people into making questionable and dangerous choices. Kenzie and Gennaro, again, find themselves in the position of moral arbiters uncertain as to whether, and how, to intervene.
Those qualities that made the original books in this series so enjoyable and compelling are in evidence again: the wit and repartee of conversation between the two PIs is as sparkling as ever; their essential down-to-earth natures and willingness to take risks on behalf of others; a fast-paced plot that moves along with confidence and conviction.
Moonlight Mile is fast, furious and fun but also thoughtful and considered. Truly a welcome return.
