A little disclosure: I think Dennis Lehane is perhaps the best crime writer in the last 50 years. I love this guy and have read almost everything he's every written (there are literally only two books by him left and one them is Mystic River which I've seen the film version of like 10 times). I other words, I'm generally going to be pretty inclined to like his stuff. Why? Well, unlike a lot of other crime writers I've read his stuff is funny, thrilling, and, while totally engrossing in the moment, it sticks with you for a long time after. He has a funny way to posing big questions in a genre that is often meant mostly for summer reading. The end of "Gone Baby Gone" is one of the best 'big question' endings I've ever read - especially since I work in Child Welfare.That said, the Kenzie-Gennaro novels (not counting the latest one which I have not read yet) are generally better on the even numbered books. "Darkness Take My Hand" (book 2) and "Gone Baby Gone" (book 4) are masterpieces. Seriously, "Darkness Take My Hand" was one of the scariest books I've ever read. Especially after you get to know, and love, so many characters in the first novel. It's like watching a sculptor take a baseball bat to his studio, you really wonder how anybody will move on after that book.That said, "Prayers for Rain" is an excellent book. It nicely reunites Kenzie & Gennaro after their falling out at the end of "Gone Baby Gone" in a way that is very believable and ultimately satisfying. Patrick's obsession with a woman, a former client, who throws herself naked off a downtown Boston building predictably leads to all manner of twists and turns, from abandoned military bunkers to mob barbeques, but ultimately it is the parade of wiseguys, crooks, down-and-out types and their interplay with the snarky Kenzie and Gennaro that make this such a fun ride. The chapter where Patrick interviews the legless owner of the run down motel is so good it could easily be a stand alone short story. The way he uses casual conversation in that chapter to illuminate this initially one dimension character and make him reveal all manner of dark secrets is so subtle that it actually surprised me. I thought it was the perfect illustration that people are seldom who you judge them to be at the outset.There is only one thing that makes this book less than the equal of its predecessor "Gone Baby Gone" and that is the slight weakness of its ending. While all the major plot points wrap up neatly, and there are a few messy ideas left for you to chew on, ultimately I felt that there was a basic lack of justice in how the main bad guy was dealt with. Perhaps that is the point, that evil people often do not get punishments equal to their crimes (certainly not equal to the pain they cause their victims and their families) but I still really wanted to see this guy get it. You know? Like Chuck Norris, Patrick Sawayze Road House style. Like a giant monster tuck rolls over him while he's eaten by sharks and blown up all at the same time. I guess that's a totally different book.This is the kind of series I would recommend to anyone even if crime fiction is not their thing. However, do yourself a favor and start at the beginning. While each book can easily be read as a stand alone there are things referred to in them that are so much richer if you know what came before. I eagerly look forward to the next book in this series. After all, it's an even numbered one so it should totally blow my mind.
Patrick and Angie have gone up against a lot of very bad people in their time as detectives. They’ve tangled with gang members, serial killers, the Irish and Italian mob, a religious cult, corrupt politicians, child molesters, and a variety of other evil sons-of-bitches. In Prayers for Rain, they meet their most sadistic and diabolical villain yet.Angie has gone to work for another detective agency, and Patrick is operating solo. Without Angie around, he’s losing his taste for the job, though. However, he gets very interested when Karen Nichols hires him to help get a stalker off her back. Karen is the type of person who seems too nice and innocent to exist in the world. She just wants to marry her boyfriend and lead a normal life. Patrick and his personal wrecking crew Bubba manage to *ahem* 'persuade' the stalker to leave Karen alone and consider it a job well done. Karen sends Patrick a check signed with little hearts on it. Case closed.Six months later, Patrick hears that Karen has committed suicide. He realizes that he forgot to return a call she made to him months before, and he’s shocked to hear that Karen’s life imploded after he last saw her. Her boyfriend was hit by a car and is in a coma. She lost her job and her home. He’s even more shocked to hear that Karen ended up on drugs and became a prostitute before she finally stepped off a building. Patrick can’t believe that the woman he met could fall apart so fast and starts looking into what happened. Fortunately for him, Angie is willing to come back and help out.What they find is that Karen’s life was systematically destroyed by a mysterious figure. But why would anyone go to so much effort to crush a woman whose biggest dream was being able to afford a Toyota Camry? As Patrick and Angie try to figure out who ruined Karen’s life, they’re contacted by the man who did it. Now he’s threatening to do the same to them if they don’t back off, and he’s more than capable of making good on the threat. Wow. It’d been several years since I’d read the Patrick & Angie novels, and I’d kind of forgotten how good Lehane was at creating creepy and effective villains as well as his knack for keeping you on the edge of your seat. I especially liked that while he never made Patrick and Angie superheroes, that they’re also not victims. If someone screws with them, they go on the offensive, and their motto is that payback is a bitch.This one also has more of Bubba than the other books, and the big crazy bastard is in rare form here. Whether it’s using a tennis racket to negotiate with a stalker or escorting Patrick to a Mafia barbecue or schooling the detectives on the fine art of walking point in hostile territory, Bubba is always highly entertaining in a demented way. He is definately among the best of the bad-ass friends in the realm of ficional private detectives.Now that I’ve re-read all of the P & A novels, I can not wait for the release of Moonlight Mile next month so I can find out what they’ve been up to for the last ten years.
What do You think about Prayers For Rain (2000)?
This one was really great up until the end, which was a bit of a letdown. At the end of "Gone Baby Gone", Patrick and Angie had split up their detective partnership over the outcome of that novel. "Prayers For Rain" begins with Patrick working solo. However, does anyone really believe that Angie won't make her way into the plot? Of course, she does.The book gets off to a great start. A very sweet, innocent,woman is being stalked by a creep. Patrick handles the problem, but then the action really gets going. The apparent villain is swapped for a much creepier bad guy -- a malicious, hateful man named Wesley. The conflict between Patrick and Wesley makes for most of the great action in the book.The character of Wesley is one of the best I have come across in my years as a reader. He is a sociopathic, malevolent force in the book, but highly articulate at the same time. When Wesley is on stage, I found myself completely attentive to what he was going to say or do next. Other highlights are a great scene at a mobster's family get together, the development of Bubba Rogowski as a character -- (even some romance for Bubba!), and a great scene where some rollerbladers snatch a purse. For the mast majority of the book, Lehane shows himself to be completely in control of a complicated, but follow-able plot.Unfortunately, the ending is a bit on the blah side. Perhaps if the book had been on the same average level as the ending, I wouldn't have felt somewhat let down. There are some revelations at the end, but they feel a bit tacked-on. Unlike the rest of the book, which really seems alive with tension and action, the ending just felt a bit flat. Still, the book is well worth reading, and another great effort by Dennis Lehane.
—David
I read this book from cover to cover in one sitting. Who has time for boring books when there are Dennis Lehane books to read? Most books have chunks that just read blah blah blah – either irrelevant or just filler. Dennis Lehane books don’t have these chunks. His plot zings around like ricocheting bullets and you have to hold on tight to every word. There are also often parts that make me laugh out loud, which helps to break my white-knuckle grip on the book! I have to admit that I was a little sad that this was the last Kenzie/Gennaro book. I’ve really grown to love these characters and I will miss them.
—Julie
I've loved Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro from the beginning so it was with a heavy heart that I approached this, the last book in this stellar PI series. Sadly, it wasn't quite the send-off I was hoping for.Sure, the story was fast-paced and suspenseful, and there were a few things I did enjoy about the novel, mainly Patrick's new flame, sexy defense attorney Vanessa Moore. I found her intelligent and interesting, although I didn't really understand her role; if the antagonist was trying to terrorize Kenzie, why would he pick a casual sex partner like Moore to threaten and not go for someone who was really dear to him, like former lover Grace Cole?...Which brings me to my first gripe. It seems that Dennis Lehane lacks both a good memory and a fact-checker, because he frequently forgets minor details that he himself came up with. An example would be the color of Grace Cole's hair. In the short scene she has with Kenzie, which provides closure to their romance that started in 'Darkness', she's described as having ash-blonde hair but, in 'Darkness', where her role was much more substanial, her hair is auburn. Sure, these are minor details, but it's still an annoyance. If Lehane is too lazy to do some background research to respect the characters he, himself, came up with, what else can't he be bothered to check? And errors like this run rampant upon the pages. Errors that could have been caught and corrected if anyone had really taken the time to check.And that's my main gripe with this book - it's lazy and feels rushed. The plot isn't even that labyrinthine, unlike its predecessors, which had at least four or five twists before the climax of the story. Here it's pretty much resolved from the get-go, basically a no brainer, and devoid of any of that three-dimensional emotional conflict and character interaction that was so prevalent in Lehane's other Kenzie/Gennaro novels. He simply glosses over the issues that forced Gennaro to terminate her partnership with Kenzie in the previous book, acting as if said situation is now merely trivial. There's seriously only a three paragraph, half-a-page dialogue between Angie and Patrick and then BOOM, all is forgiven. And Lehane never bothers to clarify the ambiguity surrounding the ill-fated David Wetterau's "accident" crossing the street, and why he was in one place but supposed to be in another. This is a huge plot hole that's left gaping and empty. One of many. Lehane was obviously more concerned with releasing a half-assed product than hankering down and writing a well fleshed-out finale for two characters the readers have grown to love. I'll still recommend the series to friends because books like 'Darkness, Take My Hand' and 'Gone, Baby, Gone' were so fantastic; those two are models for what this, the curtain call, should have been. But this book just broke my heart - possibly because it means we're now finished with Kenzie and Gennaro but, mostly, because it was just so underwhelming.
—Grant
