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Gone, Baby, Gone: A Novel Review

Having loved Mystic River, I read Shutter Island next and was a tad disappointed in it. The reviews said this was better, and it is. Lehane's imagery and sense of place I particularly like; reading him you have a real feel for the neighborhoods in his part of the Boston area. Another reviewer mentioned his allusion to sleet being like lice; I agree--that's one of the best sentences I've seen in a long time.
The story line is, of course, most unpleasant. What good can come of child abuse and abduction? But, except for possibly too much graphic description, it was generally believable. And, very sad.
[SPOILER] I wish the "last" perp had been someone other than the one Lehane chose. Seemed like piling on to me. I really didn't buy the complexity of that conspiracy.
And, I wish I had, as so many previous reviewers suggest, read the other books in this series in order before I read this one. Maybe if I had, I would have found Patrick and Angie more interesting. I really didn't "get" them and their dialog seemed trite and flat. The perps were much more interesting. A couple of other reviewers didn't buy that Patrick is always willing to do whatever is necessary, regardless of the finer points of legality, but at the end couldn't get by the illegality of what Angie was asking him to do. I didn't buy that either, but maybe reading the previous books would have given me more insight?
All that said, I will be renting the movie.

Gone, Baby, Gone: A Novel Overview

The tough neighborhood of Dorchester is no place for the innocent or the weak. Its territory is defined by hard heads and even harder luck; its streets are littered with the detritus of broken families, hearts, dreams. Now, one of its youngest is missing. Private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro don’t want the case. But after pleas from the child’s aunt, they open an investigation that will ultimately risk everything—their relationship, their sanity, and even their lives—to find a little girl lost.

Gone, Baby, Gone: A Novel Specifications

Cheese Olamon, "a six-foot-two, four-hundred-and-thirty-pound yellow-haired Scandinavian who'd somehow arrived at the misconception he was black," is telling his old grammar school friends Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro why they have to convince another mutual chum, the gun dealer Bubba Rugowski, that Cheese didn't try to have him killed. "You let Bubba know I'm clean when it comes to what happened to him. You want me alive. Okay? Without me, that girl will be gone. Gone-gone. You understand? Gone, baby, gone." Of all the chilling, completely credible scenes of sadness, destruction, and betrayal in Dennis Lehane's fourth and very possibly best book about Kenzie and Gennaro, this moment stands out because it captures in a few pages the essence of Lehane's success.

Private detectives Kenzie and Gennaro, who live in the same working-class Dorchester neighborhood of Boston where they grew up, have gone to visit drug dealer Cheese in prison because they think he's involved in the kidnapping of 4-year-old Amanda McCready. Without sentimentalizing the grotesque figure of Cheese, Lehane tells us enough about his past to make us understand why he and the two detectives might share enough trust to possibly save a child's life when all the best efforts of traditional law enforcement have failed. By putting Kenzie and Gennaro just to one side of the law (but not totally outside; they have several cop friends, a very important part of the story), Lehane adds depth and edge to traditional genre relationships. The lifelong love affair between Kenzie and Gennaro--interrupted by her marriage to his best friend--is another perfectly controlled element that grows and changes as we watch. Surrounded by dead, abused, and missing children, Kenzie mourns and rages while Gennaro longs for one of her own. So the choices made by both of them in the final pages of this absolutely gripping story have the inevitability of life and the dazzling beauty of art.

Other Kenzie/Gennaro books available in paperback: Darkness, Take My Hand, A Drink Before the War, Sacred. --Dick Adler

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Customer Reviews

Recommendation: Highly Recommended - Lynn Scully - Boston, MA, USA
I thoroughly recommedend all of Dennis Lehane's books. Gifted author, Although, with this book, the ending was a little upsetting to me, but I guess that's what makes him a great writer. This is a must read.

Sleepless in Boston - TVLand Fan - Harrisburg, Pa USA
I agree with the previous reviewer. I have lost a lot of sleep the past two weeks as I worked my way through the first four volumes of Lehane's Kenzie/Gennaro series. Even though a Bostonian, I had only read Mystic River until now. I liked it but I disliked Lehane's fictionalizing of Boston. By this, I mean setting the story in the Boston neighborhood of Buckingham, which does not exist. Call me petty, but I found it distracting.

Since starting the Kenzie/Gennaro series 10 days ago, I have become HOOKED!. Lehane's ability to elicit laugh out loud moments in the middle of some of the most gruesome scenes this side of Silence of the Lambs is amazing.

One warning: If you have not read any of this series, READ THEM IN ORDER! Lehane frequently reminisces in later books about events in previous books, giving away details and often spoiling the whodunit aspect of the earlier books if you have not already read them.

Sorry, I Need A Break - The Reader - Pittsburgh, PA
I'm a night reader. I get into bed, crack a book and relax for about an hour before drowsing off. Lately, my routine has been turned completely upside down. I've just read 4 Lehane books in a row and haven't slept in weeks! Instead of reading one hour a night, I'm averaging 3-4 hours a night. I go into work and get, "Wow, you look bad, what happened to you last night?" LEHANE, that's what happened. LEHANE. Here's an idea: how about ending a chapter with something that doesn't force me to read the next page?? C'mon, I need sleep! And Gone, Baby, Gone was the worst of the series. I mean, I didn't get any sleep! So, in order for me to put my life back together, I'm taking a much needed break. I just picked up Wilson's "The Keep". It looks pretty good: nazis and monsters. I shouldn't have any problems falling asleep after an hour of reading that.

Check out this author - Seany B. - Huntington, MA
Lehane is my favorite author now. The dialogue is edgy, colorful, definitely adult rated. But the topics are deep, controversial and thought provoking. The books offer so much more than the typical suspense- detective genre. I think this book "Gone Baby Gone" is the last of the series with Patrick Knezie and Angela Genarro as the detective partners, so don't read this one until you start with "A Drink Before the War" and take it from there. One thing I did not like about this book is the way it ended. I don't want to spoil it, but it was heartbreaking to see how the relationships evolved and changed.

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Wednesday, September 8, 2010