Dennis Lehane

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BOOKS BY THIS AUTHOR


Title: Prayers For Rain: Description:
Prayers for Rain is Dennis Lehane's fifth instalment in his intricately plotted, beautifully written and much under-acknowledged Boston mystery series. Lehane's books reflect our morally complex times, when the borders between right and wrong are somewhat blurry. Private investigator Patrick Kenzie is in the middle of a personal crisis--he's lost his passion for the profession and is tired of people with their "predictable vices, their predictable needs and wants and dormant desires." Angie Gennaro, his occasional sweetheart, lifelong friend and fellow investigator has quit the business. She's still deeply resentful about Patrick's handling of the Amanda McCready case, the focus of Gone, Baby, Gone. Without Angie, private investigating has lost its fizz. The suicide of a former client, Karen Nichols, gives Kenzie his investigative itch back. Six months earlier, Kenzie tracked down a stalker who had been harassing Nichols and put an end to his heinous hobby. But Nichols needed more help than this PI could ever have imagined. "She'd been drowning and I'd been busy." The successful, middle-class young woman had been sinking into a sea of drugs, alcohol and prostitution, hitting the bottom when she jumped from the Boston Custom House. Her death consumes Kenzie--he is convinced that someone pulled her into the vortex, although her nearest and dearest simply call her weak. Kenzie teams up with his explosive, loving, gun-toting friend Bubba Rogowski, and, after a boozy reunion, Angie Gennaro joins them. This fearless threesome must surely be the most original team in contemporary crime fiction. Good at the core--but seriously screwed up by various demons from their pasts--tact and decorum is hardly their style. They work their way across Boston, doing whatever it takes to question Nichols's family and acquaintances. By unveiling the real Nichols, tragic family secrets, betrayals and conspiracies are also unmasked. If you haven't experienced Dennis Lehane's world before, be prepared for an invigorating new reading experience. --Naomi Gesinger

Title: Mystic River: Description:
Dennis Lehane's Mystic River takes the material of the ordinary police procedural thriller and shapes it into heart-break. As boys, Jimmy, Dave and Sean were friends, until one day Dave was abducted by two men pretending to be cops, and was never quite the same again. As men, Dave is a damaged fantasist, safe in a quietly happy marriage; Jimmy a retired criminal making a good respectable living for the sake of his children; and Sean is the homicide cop who finds himself investigating the murder of Jimmy's eldest daughter Katie. This is not just a book about what becomes of the children who grow into adults; it is about what happens to a neighbourhood when the rules change, when an old established working-class district acquires gentrified espresso bars at one end and the beats of the city's most dangerous whores at the other. It is also a book about the tragedy of all sudden violent deaths; we never forget our sense of Katie as she was, dancing on the last night of her life--she is never just the corpse here, never just the object of mourning and investigation. --Roz Kaveney

Title: Sacred: Description:
Griefstricken over the death of her mother and the impending death of her father, Desiree Stone has been missing for three weeks - and so has the first investigator hired to find her. Boston detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro are hired to continue the search, but nothing is what it seems. From the Back Cover Griefstricken over the accidental death of her mother and the impending death of her father, Desiree Stone has been missing for three weeks - and so has the first investigator her father hired to look for her. And when the dying billionaire hires Boston detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro to continue the search for his missing daughter, they find that nothing is remotely what it seems. Travelling from the windblown streets of Boston to the rum-punch sunsets of Florida's Gulf Coast and back again, they search for a woman and a man who could be saints or sinners, victims or victimizers, alive or dead. And the more Patrick and Angie discover, as they are led down a trail of half-truths and corruption into a dark and terrifying world, the more they realize that on this case, any wrong step will certainly be their last. About the Author Dennis LehaneDennis Lehane is the author of A DRINK BEFORE THE WAR (which won the Shamus Award for Best First Novel); DARKNESS, TAKE MY HAND; SACRED; GONE, BABY, GONE; PRAYERS FOR RAIN and MYSTIC RIVER. A native of Dorchester, Massachusetts he lives in the Boston area with his wife, Sheila, and their two English bulldogs, Marlon and Stella.

Title: Gone, Baby, Gone: Description:
Kenzie and Gennaro have been hired to find four-year-old Amanda McCready, abducted from her home without leaving a trace. Despite extensive news coverage and dogged investigation, the police inquiry has so far uncovered nothing. The case is rife with oddities: Amanda's strangely indifferent mother and her dangerous, drug-addled friends; her loving aunt and uncle; and two cops who have found so many abused or dead children they may already be over the edge.As the Indian summer fades, Amanda McCready stays gone - banished so completely that she seems never to have existed. And when a second child disappears, Kenzie and Gennaro face a local media more interested in sensationalizing the abductions than helping to solve them, a police force seething with lethal secrets, and a faceless power determined to obstruct their efforts. Caught in a deadly tangle of lies and betrayal, they must confront the horror of what the world can inflict on its children in order to unravel a riddle that's anything but child's play. From the Back Cover Boston private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro are hired to find four-year-old Amanda McCready. Despite extensive news coverage and dogged investigation into her abduction, the police have uncovered nothing. The case is rife with oddities: Amanda’s indifferent mother, a couple with a history of paedophilia and a shadowy police unit. As the Indian summer fades, Amanda McCready stays gone – vanished so completely that she seems never to have existed. When a second child disappears, Kenzie and Gennaro face a local media more interested in sensationalizing the abductions than helping to solve them, a local police force seething with lethal secrets, and a faceless power determined to obstruct their efforts. Caught in a deadly tangle of lies, and determined to unravel the riddle that is anything but child’s play, they soon discover that those who go looking for the missing may not come back alive. About the Author Dennis Lehane was born and raised in Dorchester, Massachusetts. He has written seven novels, A DRINK BEFORE THE WAR, DARKNESS, TAKE MY HAND, SACRED, GONE BABY GONE, PRAYERS FOR RAIN, MYSTIC RIVER, SHUTTER ISLAND and a short story collection, CORONADO. MYSTIC RIVER was turned into an Oscar-nominated film, directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon and Tim Robbins. Before becoming a full-time writer, Mr Lehane worked as a counsellor with mentally handicapped and abused children, waited tables, parked cars, drove limos, worked in bookstores, and loaded tractor-trailers. His one regret is that no one ever gave him a chance to tend bar. He lives in the Boston area.

Title: Shutter Island: Description:
Summer, 1954. US Marshal Teddy Daniels has come to Shutter Island, home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Along with his partner, Chuck Aule, he sets out to find an escaped murderess named Rachel Solando as a hurricane bears down upon them. But nothing at Ashecliffe Hospital is what it seems, and neither is Teddy Daniels. Is he there to find a missing patient? Or has he been sent to look into rumours of Ashecliffe's radical approach to psychiatry? Rumours that hint of drug experimentation, surgical trials, and lethal countermoves in the shadow war against Soviet brainwashing...As the investigation deepens, the questions mount. How has a barefoot woman escaped an island from a locked room? Who is leaving them clues in the form of cryptic codes? Why is there no record of a patient committed just one year before? What really goes on in Ward C? Why is an empty lighthouse surrounded by an electrified fence and armed guards? The closer Teddy and Chuck get to the truth, the more elusive it becomes, and the more they begin to believe that they may never leave Shutter Island. Because someone is trying to drive them insane... From the Back Cover THE NEW NOVEL FROM THE AUTHOR BEHIND THE CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED MOVIE, MYSTIC RIVER Summer, 1954. US Marshal Teddy Daniels has come to Shutter Island, home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Along with his partner, Chuck Aule, he sets out to find an escaped murderess named Rachel Solando, as a hurricane bears down upon them. But nothing at Ashecliffe Hospital is what it seems. And neither is Teddy Daniels. Is he there to find a missing patient? Or has he been sent to look into rumours of Ashecliffe's radical approach to psychiatry? As the investigation deepens, the questions mount. How has a barefoot woman escaped an island from a locked room? Who is leaving them clues in the form of cryptic codes? Why is there no record of a patient committed just one year before? What really goes on in Ward C? Why is an empty lighthouse surrounded by an electrified fence and armed guards? The closer Teddy and Chuck get to the truth, the more elusive it becomes, and the more they begin to believe that they may never leave Shutter Island. Because someone is trying to drive them insane... About the Author Dennis Lehane:Dennis Lehane is the author of A DRINK BEFORE THE WAR (which won the Shamus Award for Best First Novel); DARKNESS, TAKE MY HAND; SACRED; GONE, BABY, GONE; PRAYERS FOR RAIN; SHUTTER ISLAND and the NEW YORK TIMES bestseller MYSTIC RIVER. A native of Dorchester, Massachusetts, he lives in the Boston area.