I think the general consensus is that, of all Dennis Lehane’s Patrick Kenzie/Angela Genarro private eye novels, the most perfect, memorable, and troubling was Gone, Baby Gone, which was also turned into a very good movie that not enough people saw. In that story, the detectives, who were also lovers, nearly split up for good over the decision of what to do about a little girl kidnapped from a neglectful home. The conclusion of the book was heartbreaking and a real moral puzzler.

After more than a decade, author Lehane has picked up the story again in Moonlight Mile. Much has changed for the Boston investigators. Patrick, having barely survived a gunshot wound, has turned to less dangerous forms of detective work, doing contract jobs for a large firm. Angela is working on a graduate degree. They have a four-year-old daughter who is the light of their lives. Money’s tight, but if they can hold out until Angela finishes school, life ought to be good.

And then the past shows up. The aunt of Amanda McCready, the little girl kidnapped in Gone, Baby, Gone, who originally hired Patrick and Angela, approaches Patrick. Amanda, now sixteen years old, has disappeared again, she says. She fears it has something to do with the girl’s stepfather, an ex-convict and drug dealer with a record of sexual abuse.



Patrick insists he did the right thing the first time around, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel guilt. He can’t resist looking into the matter, hoping (he himself hints) to find some kind of absolution in a re-match.

But Amanda is no helpless damsel in distress anymore, and baby sellers and Russian gangsters are in the mix, and if Patrick is looking to find any moral clarity, he’s in for a major disappointment.

I won’t say I didn’t like Moonlight Mile. The writing, like all Lehane’s work, is top-notch, it’s nice to meet old character friends again, and the mystery is satisfyingly convoluted. (I need to note, for the sake of this audience, that Lehane misses no opportunity to tell social conservatives what boobs he thinks we are). If the troubling ending of Gone, Baby, Gone appealed to you, you’ll find an even more troubling ending in this one.

But the whole thing, for me, ended up with a sort of Dover Beach feeling…

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain….

…which I for one found a little unsatisfying.

Cautions for language, adult situations, violence, and that moral uncertainty thing.