Order DARKNESS, TAKE MY HAND here
Visiting Bubba in the old warehouse where he lives is a lot like playing Twister on the edge of a cliff. Bubba got the first forty feet of the second floor wired with enough explosive to vaporize the eastern seabord, so you have to follow his directions to the letter if you want to breathe without artificial assistance for the rest of your life. Both Angie and I have been through the pocess countless times before, but we've never trusted out memories enough to cross those forty feet without Bubba's help. Call us overly cautious.
I have met several people with killer novel ideas in my life. People who were already writing stories and people who stashed their novel ideas like canned food for the apocalypse. Having the idea itself is the easy part, but making it into a killer novel is where you separate the men from the boys. In that regard, Dennis Lehane is an alpha dog of crime fiction. His capacity to turn up one killer novel after the other made his reputation what it is today and it all started with his private detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro. There are six novels in the series, but my favourite (as well as most fans' favourite) is DARKNESS, TAKE MY HAND. The title might be silly, the cover looks a little funny too, but what a novel. What a freakin' crime novel this is.
Barely back on their feet after the events of A DRINK BEFORE THE WAR, Patrick and Angie are being sollicited by a college professor named Diandra Warren, who received threats against her family. The source of these threats seems to be local gangster and long-time acquaintance Kevin Hurlihy, so our favourite detectives get on the case, set up a meeting with Kevin and his boss Jack Rouse and have our favourite fun-loving psychopath Bubba Rogowski tailing him. But this case is way off and seemingly random people keep falling around Patrick and Angie like dominos. It's when Kara Rider is killed in the same horrible fashion than a long-solved murder, that the pieces start to slowly latch together. This wasn't about Diandra Warren. Well, it wasn't JUST about her.
Dennis Lehane is considered one of the most popular noirists working today. That's partly because that's how he refers to himself, but I believe what he does is way more complicated and peculiar that straight out noir fiction. I don't think what hedoes bears any resemblance to what Jim Thompson or David Goodis were doing. What makes Dennis Lehane so special is his mystery writing abilities first and foremost. In DARKNESS, TAKE MY HAND, the mystery is so thick and muddy, you spend the first hundred pages wondering what the fuck is going on and why the hell you're so anxious to turn the page. It appears like a series of loosely related portraits of the Boston underworld until Dennis Lehane build a first bridge and make you realize that the underworld, working class, childhood friendships and collective stigma are all interdependant in a tight-knit community.
''What do you think we talked about, Special Agent Bolton? He told me to back off the Warren investigation.''
''So you fired a round into his car.''
''Seemed an appropriate response at the time.''
The Kenzie & Gennaro series is also special because of its cast of recurring characters. Giving DARKNESS, TAKE MY HAND a third reading this week, I was reminded how special it is to read some Bubba Rogowski dialogue. Bubba is the perfect example of a great support cast who thrives when being used sporadically. There is always an aura of danger to him, but he can have intelligent, sometimes sophisticated discussions with Patrick and Angie, because they grew up shooting the shit together and they are to a certain extent responsible for Bubba's intellectual blooming. Don't get me wrong, he's deranged. But he's a smart, loyal and vicious deranged man. Same thing with cop Devin Amronklin who was the most borderline professional relationship to Patrick. Patrick loves Devin, but Devin has issues letting Patrick loose on a case because he knows it's unleashing a world of problems. Their relationship happens in between the sentences, like in old Western stories.
DARKNESS, TAKE MY HAND is one of my favourite Dennis Lehane novels, along with PRAYERS FOR RAIN and MYSTIC RIVER. He said in interview that his only goal while writing DARKNESS, TAKE MY HAND was to constantly ''up the ante'' and I believe it's a very healthy way to think when writing a mystery. He ended up brushing a large portrait of a crime that transcends just about every character in his story, even his terrific leads. I've read the Kenzie & Gennaro novels in the following order -> GONE BABY GONE (4), A DRINK BEFORE THE WAR (1), SACRED (3), PRAYERS FOR RAIN (5), DARKNES, TAKE MY HAND (2) and MOONLIGHT MILE (6), so I can tell you there is no need to read them in order, yet there are small winks and rewards scattered along the way for doing so. Yet, DARKNESS, TAKE MY HAND is about the best place to start the Kenzie & Gennaro novel OR a serious infatuation with Dennis Lehane's novels.