Dennis Lehane: Crime Fiction book reviews

Dennis Lehane is the author of Mystic River, which was widely viewed as one of the best books in 2001. The movie adaptation was also met with critical acclaim, and was a commercial success too. I enjoyed the movie, but found it too depressing to try again in its printed form.

When the film adaptation of Lehane’s Gone Baby Gone came to theatres I decided to try the novel before the movie could scare me away. The result was a four hour reading session on Christmas Eve, which ended at three in the morning after having finished the book in one night. Shortly after that I read Lehane 2003’s novel Shutter Island, which I finished around four in the morning because I was too scared to stop without a conclusion.

Both stories are entertaining, and they’re far from carbon copies of each other. Lehane does not fall into the rut of other authors who find a comfortable niche and just run with it. Both are set in a fictionalized Boston, but the two stories take place about forty years apart. Gone covers some of the darker sides of Boston, and Island is set in a mental hospital for the criminally insane on a small island off of Boston.

Gone is the fourth installment of Lehane’s two recurring characters, Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro. Kenzie and Gennaro are private detectives hired by the aunt of a missing girl to supplement the police search for her. The two partners, who are also lovers, are perfect compliments of each other. Gennaro takes the case hard, as she deals with her desire to have a child, which is hampered by what she knows about the world and what this case shows her about people. Kenzie holds his emotions in, and has no false hope about the promise of mankind.

It’s the secondary characters in Gone that are the most interesting. Helene McCready, the mother of the abducted child, is generally apathetic about her missing child, which is only superseded by the fact she doesn’t like having something taken that belongs to her. Detectives Poole and Broussard are in charge of the case, and seem to be working in cohesion with the hired help. Poole and Broussard are the most amusing characters in the story, and perhaps the most complicated characters, with Broussard undergoing a chilling transformation and subsequent breakdown.

The story seems a little surreal at points, as the Boston everyone knows is replaced by something akin to Frank Miller’s Sin City. It’s not that it’s hard to believe this story could happen, but it’s the way Lehane just sort of hits you in the face with it, which makes it hard to digest. Gone may be a little too preachy at points, but it raises important questions, and is an entertaining read.

Island is set in 1954 and follows U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels, who with his new partner Chuck Aule has been assigned to Shutter Island to find a missing mental patient. Daniels is dealing with the recent loss of his wife, an event that left him with migraines and very vivid dreams that haunt his sleep. As a hurricane ravages the island, Daniels struggles to handle these debilitations.

From the onset of the investigation nothing seems to fit right. The missing patient has done the impossible and vanished from the island. Questions arise about the facility and staff. And with every clue the Marshals uncover, it seems they’re moving further and further from the truth. Then, as if written by Agatha Christie, the hurricane traps the Marshals on the island, except now they have reason to fear to believe they’ll never get off the island.

Island feels different from other Lehane stories, in part because of the setting, but also for the lack of investigation into the human condition. This seems a little odd since the story occurs in a mental health facility, but the novel glosses over any deep soul searching, and provides depth only to Daniels character, while leaving everyone else rather two dimensional. With the conclusion of Island you can understand Lehane’s approach, and while it ensures for a very entertaining read, it’s not as good a book as Gone Baby Gone.

I would definitely recommend Shutter Island if you’re looking for a chilling thrill, and I would recommend Gone Baby Gone for someone in search of an excellent crime drama. Also, depending on the writer’s strike, 2009 could see the release of Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio’s adaptation of Shutter Island.