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[sam709]

Finished Dennis Lehane's latest Kenzie-Genaro Boston-based mystery novel Moonlight Mile. It's the "sequel" to Gone Baby Gone, the last K-G book and it updates the PI couple to today, 12 years after GBG.

Frankly, I was a bit let down. Gone Baby Gone, best of the earlier Kenzie-Genaro books, and his Shutter Island, are both masterpieces of noir fiction, complex and moody, superb reading (two fine movies were also made of the books -- Scorsese's film Shutter Island is awesome).

I wish Moonlight Mile had lived up to the previous books. It was derivative, with too much commentary on our current political situation, which bears zero relevance to the novel per se. The book read as though Lehane felt compelled to write a K-G sequel and by damn, he'd do it!

The book was entertaining and certainly worth the paperback or download price, but I've read plenty of great modern mysteries that rival it. It just didn't have the strength of the earlier books.

Maybe I'm just being cranky, but there seemed to be too much driving around place to place and not enough happening once they got there. The characters of Patrick Kenzie and Angela Genaro are however superbly drawn, with subtle personal details and coloring, excellent. However the other characters are mostly dry and a bit one-dimensional.

There is also a dearth of interesting action in the middle portion of the book, despite a great, intriguing start. Things pick up nicely toward the finale however.

There wrre a couple of egregious gun errors that made me cringe. I mean, Dennis Lehane is a major writer now -- he can get technical help at a moment's notice, with a phone call. For the technical gun stuff to not be properly described is just lazy. And I think it shows generally his detachment toward the novel as a whole. He seemed to treat it more as an assignment than a passion, when he's capable of far better.

Anyway, that's one person's opinion. Yours? And please no spoilers.

[mkelberer]

I agree completely. I will read the damn thing because he is perhaps my favorite author, but after reading first 20 pages or so I had to put it in my "later" pile

[Dave Freas]

Add my vote to the disappointed list.

But first, Sam709, Gone, Baby, Gone was not the last novel in the K-G series.  The series ran: A Drink Before The War, Darkness, Take My Hand,Sacred, Gone, Baby, Gone, and Prayers For Rain.

I, too, felt it was written more as an assignment to deliver a K-G sequel than a desire to produce the next step in the series.  I also found the 12 year gap between PFR and MM a bit disconcerting.  The main characters had changed too much but Lehane never gave us an adequate explanation, I felt, for what caused those changes.  Truthfully, I wish he had continued the series while writing his other books instead of putting the K-G duo on the shelf.  Then, I think the changes in them now would not be such a 'jump.'

I thought, too, that the story lacked the snap and 'edge' of previous ones and when it did occur (at least early in the book), it seemed forced.

That's my take.

Dave