Moonlight Mile: A Kenzie and Gennaro Novel (Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro Book 6)

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, I was definitely jumping up and down for joy when I heard the P.I. couple was returning in a new novel, Moonlight Mile. When I was finally able to get a copy of it, I found myself hooked line and sinker after only the first couple of pages. By the last page, I felt Moonlight Mile had delivered everything that was promised by the author.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 a house mom while going to school to work on a college degree. Patrick is still doing private investigation work, but now in an on-call position for a top rated 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 truly 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.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 on their bookshelf. Other than that, I have nothing but praise for the novel, and I sincerely hope Dennis Lehane will not allow this to be the last book in the series. Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro are two characters I want to see more of before I finally kick the bucket.

Dennis Lehane is, hands down, my favorite writer. This is the continuation/possibly ending after years of my favorite series. There is no way I wasn't going to love it -- and I did and do. Even though he took a shot at the Kindle, which made me passive-aggressively tweet the passage, using my Kindle. That'll learn him.I don't think you have to read the whole series to enjoy this book, not at all. The ideal scenarios though, in order, would be:1. Read the series, starting with  A Drink Before the War , Darkness, Take My Hand , Sacred: A Novel , Gone, Baby, Gone: A Novel , Prayers for Rain  and then Moonlight Mile. This will give you all the back story, and will allow you to see the full journey of the characters, and these are all solid books!2. The quicker option, which should be sufficient, would be to read  Gone, Baby, Gone: A Novel  and then Moonlight Mile. These two are tied together very closely.3. Even quicker, unless you're a speed-reader: rent the movie of  Gone Baby Gone  and then read Moonlight Mile. This way, you can eat some popcorn and not slop up your book or ereader. (You know, wash your hands before moving on to the book.)4. Just read Moonlight Mile and you'll miss some back story, and a heck of a read, but should be able to follow along.The story picks up Patrick and Angie's story several years later. They're a little more settled, a little less street-toughened, and their most divisive case re-enters their lives when the little girl who went missing in Gone Baby Gone, now a teen, disappears again. Violence, and occasional hilarity, ensue.Dennis Lehane is amazingly skilled at dialogue, and pretty much everything else, prose-wise. The words his characters utter sound both natural and better than the real thing, and I found myself laughing any number of times.***Patrick Kenzie goes in search of his stolen laptop:I nodded at the table. "My laptop.""Huh?" He looked wildly confused. "This is my laptop.""Funny. Looks a lot like mine.""That's called a model." His eyes popped against their sockets. "If they all look different, they'd be kind of hard to manufacture, don't you think?"[Another character questions Patricks's intelligence]I said, "I'm just a girl standing before a boy looking for his laptop."***Like Gone Baby Gone, Moonlight Mile brings up one heck of a situation ethics question. Pretty much the same question. What responsibility does the law have to protect a child and is there a time when it becomes okay to break the law?***"And what did you think?""About what you did?""Yeah," I said."You did the right thing," she said."Oh." I almost smiled in gratitude.She met my eyes. "But you were still wrong."***Patrick and Angie remain a terrific couple without ever becoming cliched or maudlin. In the book world, we're often given allegedly tough heroines who bring to mind nothing more than a spitting kitten swiping her claws at the air and missing by a mile. Angie has always been a strong partner in the relationship even though she did put mommyhood decisively first at a pivotal moment, but it felt real -- and I wouldn't want to be the one to threaten her child, or Patrick for that matter.Patrick is still the guy you want in your corner, because he keeps his word. I also find him dead sexy -- even before he was played by Casey Affleck. He's the master of the effortless cool quip, even better than Phillip Marlowe. Seriously. Patrick reminds of me of the Simon and Garfunkel song, The Boxer:In the clearing stands a boxerAnd a fighter by his tradeAnd he carries the remindersOf ev'ry glove that laid him downOr cut him till he cried outIn his anger and his shame"I am leaving, I am leaving"But the fighter still remains.Patrick wants to accept the job that pays well, but has a little problem with the morally bankrupt part. He's told that he carries his class rage, and he does. He at least carries with him a blue-collar sense of justice. He can't seem to take off his gloves and while he's faster with a quip than he is to outward signs of rage, the wisecracks cover but can't hide his common decency.Dennis Lehane has yet to write something I haven't loved and wouldn't recommend. My only regret is that I wished there was even more Angie! I'd love, even though this might be the end, to see her really be the focus of a novel. Whatever the author writes, I'll read. He hasn't disappointed me yet.

パトリックとｱﾝｼﾞィは結婚し、娘にも恵まれ、慎ましいながらも「家庭」を形成しています。現在の社会状況を映す描写から、定職に就くことは難しく、子供を持つ若い夫婦の生活は厳しく、将来の安定を模索する二人の心の葛藤が描かれています。とは言え、沁みついた正義感と冒険心は健在。１２年前の「子供誘拐事件」が主役二人に残した罪悪感を彼等なりに払拭すべく、超人的？！活躍をみせます。二人の友達、ブッバも登場。この５作目で、しみじみ「時の流れ」を感じる作品です。機知に富んだ会話、アメリカン・ドリーム後のアメリカが巧みに描かれています。

The final Kenzie and Genarro book is very good, don't be afraid to read it. Be sad, but be happy that Lehane has given us a positive, life-affirming ending.As the book starts, our beautiful Angela and Patrick are on the edge and it hurts. The scraping and the fear, and it hurts almost everyone I know these days.And I fear for the future of my fine son, and his someday children:GREED is truly the most terrible challenge of our times, and capitalism is its tool, its means to power and more greed.Greed is a (contagious) mental illness, an unfillable hole, a hunger that denies justice, an expression of a broken ego.Greed consumes the earth without respite, and is a cancer on humanity. Greed destroys us and our children and their future.Greed is death.33% .... Patrick is right, here. The difference between their kids' world today and our parents world now is 3x greater than when we were kids. It's overwhelming.“After my daughter was born, I’d considered buying a shotgun to ward off potential suitors fourteen or so years up the road. Now, as I listened to these girls babble and imagined Gabby one day talking with the same banality and ignorance of the English language, I thought of buying the same shotgun to blow my own **** head off.”87% ... This book still contains the essence of our flawed Hero Patrick, although Angela is not around much, sadly. I really miss them as a vital and dynamic team. The plot is pure Lehane, and drags us along relentlessly, and pleasurably.The only thing that is out-of-whack here is that no 16-year-old, not one in the world, has the literacy and presence and complexity of mind that Amanda does in this book. However, that flaw does allow Lehane to continue to explore "parent-child" bonding and trauma. This theme appears in most of Lehane's books. It's perhaps his most important and personal topic, and is central to the horror of his masterpiece Mystic River.It's terrific crime noir writing, and if you read it right and deeply, it aches.97% ... wonderful“Driving south on 93, I realized, once and for all, that I love the things that chafe. The things that fill me with stress so total I can’t remember when a block of it didn’t rest on top of my heart. I love what, if broken, can’t be repaired. What, if lost, can’t be replaced.I love my burdens.”I'm very sad to see the end of this series. In my heart, Patrick and Angela are real.And in the end, Patrick and Angela and Gabby, their daughter are bound tightly, solidly, safely, hopefully, and with joy. And Bubba too, the mountain presence in their lives

11 years after Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro found Amanda McCready in "Gone, Baby, Gone" she's disappeared again! Russian mobsters are after her as Kenzie and Gennaro hit her trail as well as wannabe gangsters, but as they investigate Amanda's sad life in the years following her return to her biological drug addled abusive mother, a strange picture emerges of the person she became. And what does the riddle mean - five people went into a room, two people died, but four came out?I really enjoyed this novel, it's fast paced, well written, with some excellent characterisation. Dennis Lehane is a helluva writer who can write action better than some directors shoot it on film and the sequences involving the Russian mafia were exhilarating. He also picks up the tone of the two detectives perfectly from "Gone Baby Gone" almost as if it hadn't been 10 years since we'd seen the characters.I will say this though - it's not as good as "Gone Baby Gone" or "Prayers for Rain", the storyline isn't strong enough. Neither is it as good as his masterpiece "Shutter Island" or his excellent historical novel "The Given Day", but Lehane on slightly above average is still a great read. The story takes nearly 100 pages to get going and it's over by page 370, the pacing ensuring that you'll be finished with this novel in two, if not one, sittings and that's a definite plus.The only things that bothered me were the really syrupy lovey dovey nonsense between Kenzie and Gennaro - they're in love with each other, I get it, but does Lehane really have to go on about it? You'll know what I mean when you read it. Those passages aren't many but when they show up it undermines the gritty story and high quality of writing. And the ending... well I'm not 100% sure that's how Russian mobsters as sadistic as those portrayed in this novel would behave but who knows? It's not totally unrealistic but seems a bit unconvincing.Overall, excellent mystery thriller! Well written, some great characters, an intriguing storyline, and a fast pace in keeping with the genre. While it's not Kenzie and Gennaro's best outing, it's still a good novel and definitely good for several hours' entertainment. Well done Dennis, keep `em coming!

Dennis Lehane schrieb in den Jahren 1994 bis 1999 eine aus fünf Bänden bestehende Krimiserie mit den beiden in Boston, Massachusetts, agierenden unorthodoxen Privatdetektiven Patrick Kenzie und Angelo Gennaro: "Streng vertraulich!" (Ullstein 64603 - "A Drink before the War", 1994), "Absender unbekannt" (Ullstein 24718 - "Darkness, Take My Hand", 1996), "In tiefer Trauer" (Ullstein 24515 - "Sacred", 1997), "Kein Kinderspiel" (Ullstein 24841 - "Gone, Baby, Gone", 1998) und "Regenzauber" (Ullstein 25173 - "Prayers for Rain", 1999). Mit dem fünften Band schien die Serie beendet, es folgten keine Fortsetzungen. Doch nach 11 Jahren kam ein neuer Band heraus, der mittlerweise auch in deutscher Sprache vorliegt: Moonlight Mile" (Ullstein 28350 - Moonlight Mile", 2010). Patrick Kenzie wird wie schon vor vielen Jahren erneut von Beatrice McCready ersucht, ihre Nichte Amanda zu finden. Die Entführung und das Wiederfinden der kleinen Amanda ist der Plot von "Kein Kinderspiel - Gone, Baby, Gone". Wiederum ist die mittlerweile zum Teenager herangewachsene Amanda verschwunden. Und trotz der Probleme, die sich mit dem ersten Wiederfinden von Amanda ergeben haben, lässt sich Patrick Kenzie überzeugen, die Suche aufzunehmen. Doch wenn man mittlerweile mit Angelo Gennaro verheiratet ist und mit Gabrielle eine kleine Tochter hat, kann man sich nicht gefahrlos mit der Russenmafia anlegen. Denn mit dieser, dem Boss Kirill und seinen Helfern Jefim und Pawlow, Dre, einem skrupellosen Arzt, einem verschwundenen Baby, Helene, der kriminellen Mutter Amandas, Kenny, deren aktuellen und ebenfalls kriminellen Lebensgefährten, Sophie, der verschwundenen Freundin Amandas, und einer hochintelligenten und raffinierten Amanda hat er bald mehr als genug zu tun. Doch der gereifte und doch nicht ganz gereifte Patrick Kenzie kommt aus dem daraus resultierenden Schlamassel zwar etwas beschädigt aber dennoch ganz gut heraus. Doch die Lösung ist ähnlich wie bei "Kein Kinderspiel - Gone, Baby, Gone" unbefriedigend. Bei gewissen moralischen Kreuzungen gibt es eben kein "das ist richtig" und "das ist falsch".

Enjoyed full series. I think the series peaked with Gone Baby Gone but last two still solid Kenzie and Gennaro books.Wrapped up the series pretty nicely and ties in with Gone Baby Gone.Always annoyed when Kenzie turns down opportunities for $.If haven’t yet start from book one and work your way here. Good private detective novels set in South Boston setting.