Karen D. (Kraduate) reviewed on 5/8/2008 + 35 more book reviews

This is both Dennis Lehane's first novel as well as the first in the Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro PI series. It's written in true noir style with gritty characters in the even grittier setting of Boston's rough neighborhoods. Lehane's writing is littered with impassioned political rhetoric and heavy-handed examinations of the racial tensions that plague my native Boston. I found myself wondering if the views are all Patrick Kenzie's or if Dennis Lehane is using his characters to express his own frustrations. In the end it doesn't matter, Lehane captures Boston perfectly.
Kenzie and Gennaro are hired by a Senator to find some âdocumentsâ allegedly stolen by the cleaning woman. The case isn't as simple as it initially sounds and Patrick and Angie are soon caught in a web of lies that connect the State House to two rival gangs. They struggle with doing right by their clients or doing the right thing, and their lives are in constant danger. They are bound to each other and the case by their experiences with domestic abuse and racial divide.
By mid-novel the characters were as comfortable for me as a pair of old sneakers, albeit with a few stuck pebbles and untied laces.

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