- I received an ARC from the publisher and had been interested in reading something by Dennis Lehane.
- Mystery/thrillers were, at one time, one of my favorite genres of books – so looking for something to re-capture the magic with.
- Deal Breaker by Harlan Coben
- The Likeness by Tana French
Summary from GoodReads:
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.
My Review:
I’ve heard quite a bit of buzz about Shutter Island (both the book and the movie) so it’s been on my list for quite some time to check out Dennis Lehane. When I saw this ARC arrive in the mail I jumped at it and put it on the “short-list” for books to read.
Now, Moonlight Mile is, as I found out a few pages in, the 6th book in a series featuring Kenzie and Gennaro, and I don’t usually like jumping into the middle of a series like that – but in this case it worked for me. There was enough background information provided that I didn’t feel overwhelmed, the chemistry between the characters was solid and packed with a good feeling of history, and the story strong enough to pull me in despite being a case that was brand new to me (unlike to the characters).
This is one of those books that you pick up, open, and read in one setting. It’s classic detective stuff, some obscenities, some hard decisions made, but solid writing and something that is able to keep interest without being overly gruesome like some popular writers are turning toward (Yes, Patterson, I’m looking at you. Swimsuit was disgusting.)
So if you are looking for a nice, solid detective read that leans more toward the gritty then the more comedic (like Harlan Coben’s Myron Bolitar series), then this would be an easy recommendation from me.
Check out these review(s):
