My younger brother, Matt has been an avid reader for as long as he has been alive. A fact that I feel like I can take *some* of the credit for. I have had the ARC of Moonlight Mile for a while, with the intention of bringing it home (Wyoming to Iowa) for the last three trips so that I could read it, then pass it on to Matt. After the third trip, I decided to go ahead & give him the ARC with the caveat that he write a review for my blog. I figured it would take him a while, at least a week or so. Wrong. He read it in one day, yesterday. Let me introduce you to Matt.....hello fellow "bookaphiles". its an honor and a privilege to write this review for my sister because Dennis Lehane is somewhat of a idol to me and reading his latest yarn in the lives of Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro was just as fun as coming home. It was like being reunited with your favorite friends and relatives over the holidays. Moonlight Mile finds us being reunited with Patrick and Angie at least 5 years after Prayers For Rain. Patrick and Angie are now married with a 4 year old daughter named Gabby. Unfortunately Patrick and Angie are facing the same financial problems the rest of us have been facing for the last few years. Angie's staying home with Gabby and taking classes to earn a college degree while Patrick is still being the coolest gumshoe in modern literature. Unfortunately this is as good as it gets for the remainder of the story because Amanda McCready the 4 year old girl that was the center of "Gone Baby, Gone" is once again...gone. The same girl that tore patrick and angie apart is threatening to do the same again. Now Amanda is 16 though, and instead of letting everything that's happened to her destroy her, shes used it to make her one of the most self-reliable individuals in Boston and possibly Patrick's intellectual match. She's that smart. And in his second search for her, Patrick will learn more about himself than he has in any of the other books.
If you've ever read a Kenzie/Gennaro book before, all the familiar elements are here fellow readers. Lehane loves his city and his characters and it seeps through into every page here. I've never been to Boston, but Lehane is so descriptive in his settings that you cant help but feel like you grew up right around the corner from him. The thing that struck me the most is how well Lehane has matured as a writer and how he's been able to bring that maturation to his characters. Patrick is not the youngster he was when he started out. He's been Boston's favorite P.I. for almost two decades now and it's taken it's toll on his soul. His career has had him see and do things that are flat out unimaginable to most of us but he's had to make it his daily life. It all comes full circle to what is, I feel, Lehanes most satisfying ending. Bittersweet with a hint of melancholy....but then again that is Lehanes Boston.
Great job, lil bro!
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