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viktor_haagThis one wasn't absorbing my direct attention, but was rather my second or third reading option for a month or so. And frankly, that's about what it merited. It was a solid and serviceable crime thriller, and probably a noteworthy debut for a writer. But the issues are 13 years old now, and it shows.
Lehane paints (and paints well) a grim and urban picture of a city that must be in many people's minds thought of as an urbane and elevated place (or perhaps that's just a Canadian's point of view). Lehane's Boston and surrounding Mass is a metropolis in decay, decline, and disintegration. Its power structure is corrupt, its blue collar neighbourhoods have taken the plunge past "working man" to "starving man" and those places that were poor a decade back are now almost full-fledged war zones.
And his corrupt crooks? Senator's aides with a shocking secret to hide that involve all sorts of compounded problems. But, really, the secret is so predictable from this decade-and-a-half vantage that a lot of the shock is not so shocking. Lehane ties together all the various threads of "the dirty deed" (which has, of course, been caught on film) neatly over the course of the book, but the final netting seems overwrought to the point of incredulity. Count all the taboos surrounding the caught-in-the-act, and the tone of the book almost buckles under the sheer weight.
Underpinning this all is the relationship between Kenzie and Gennaro, our protagonists. I have a sneaking suspicion that Lehane's book was crafted pretty solidly with, say, Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock in mind (instead, we wait the thirteen years, and we get Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan, and that might well be a relieved improvement over the original conception). The tale's told from Kenzie's point of view and he seems a man fashioned out of parts; very little about Kenzie seems to fit. It's not quite clear how he could have managed to survive this long without the aid of two key people: Gennaro, and his buddy, Bubba. On the other hand, neither is it quite clear how he's managed to retain their affections, or what he might have done to really deserve them in the first place.
A Drink Before The War won the Shamus (best First PI novel), which is not nearly the same as winning the Edgar (best mystery, period) I suppose, and that's something that, to date, Lehane has not managed.
It is not a bad book, but it's not a tremendously good one either. Lehane's claim to fame is Mystic River, which would come along 7 years later, 2 years after he seemed to have left Kenzie and Gennaro behind; in fact, it was his first move away from Kenzie and Gennaro.
I picked up A Drink Before The War and Darkness, Take My Hand (his second Kenzie-Gennaro novel) in omnibus edition off the remainder table which, again, was probably what it merited. I'm not in any great rush to read the second, so it's a toss up whether or not the book ends up at the used book store before I get to it.
But I don't regret reading it: the price was right, and the amount of attention I paid to it was right.
Lehane paints (and paints well) a grim and urban picture of a city that must be in many people's minds thought of as an urbane and elevated place (or perhaps that's just a Canadian's point of view). Lehane's Boston and surrounding Mass is a metropolis in decay, decline, and disintegration. Its power structure is corrupt, its blue collar neighbourhoods have taken the plunge past "working man" to "starving man" and those places that were poor a decade back are now almost full-fledged war zones.
And his corrupt crooks? Senator's aides with a shocking secret to hide that involve all sorts of compounded problems. But, really, the secret is so predictable from this decade-and-a-half vantage that a lot of the shock is not so shocking. Lehane ties together all the various threads of "the dirty deed" (which has, of course, been caught on film) neatly over the course of the book, but the final netting seems overwrought to the point of incredulity. Count all the taboos surrounding the caught-in-the-act, and the tone of the book almost buckles under the sheer weight.
Underpinning this all is the relationship between Kenzie and Gennaro, our protagonists. I have a sneaking suspicion that Lehane's book was crafted pretty solidly with, say, Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock in mind (instead, we wait the thirteen years, and we get Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan, and that might well be a relieved improvement over the original conception). The tale's told from Kenzie's point of view and he seems a man fashioned out of parts; very little about Kenzie seems to fit. It's not quite clear how he could have managed to survive this long without the aid of two key people: Gennaro, and his buddy, Bubba. On the other hand, neither is it quite clear how he's managed to retain their affections, or what he might have done to really deserve them in the first place.
A Drink Before The War won the Shamus (best First PI novel), which is not nearly the same as winning the Edgar (best mystery, period) I suppose, and that's something that, to date, Lehane has not managed.
It is not a bad book, but it's not a tremendously good one either. Lehane's claim to fame is Mystic River, which would come along 7 years later, 2 years after he seemed to have left Kenzie and Gennaro behind; in fact, it was his first move away from Kenzie and Gennaro.
I picked up A Drink Before The War and Darkness, Take My Hand (his second Kenzie-Gennaro novel) in omnibus edition off the remainder table which, again, was probably what it merited. I'm not in any great rush to read the second, so it's a toss up whether or not the book ends up at the used book store before I get to it.
But I don't regret reading it: the price was right, and the amount of attention I paid to it was right.
