Reviewed by Bill Sheehan

Dennis Lehane’s latest, Moonlight Mile, marks the unexpected return of Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro, the memorable protagonists of Lehane’s first five novels. Hard as it is to believe, Patrick and Angela haven’t been seen since Prayers for Rain in 1999, and they have been missed. Lehane, of course, has used the intervening years to great effect, branching out with spectacular success in such novels as Mystic River, Shutter Island, and his 2008 historical epic, The Given Day. Still, readers of the series were left with a nagging sense of frustration, of unfinished business. In Moonlight Mile, Lehane keeps faith with those readers, resuming–and resolving–a long-interrupted narrative in ways that are both esthetically and emotionally satisfying.

The new book is at once an independent narrative and a direct sequel to one of the best entries in the series, 1998’s Gone, Baby, Gone. In that earlier book, Kenzie and Gennaro investigated the disappearance of four-year-old Amanda McReady, who was abducted from the home of her alcoholic, criminally negligent mother, Helene. After many complications, they traced Amanda to the home of her “kidnappers,” a decent, older couple determined to provide Amanda with a safe, loving, and stable home. Their subsequent decision–to obey the letter of the law and return Amanda to her legal, if woefully inadequate, parent–had devastating results for virtually everyone involved, and created a deep, near permanent rift between the two partners.

By the time Moonlight Mile opens, twelve years have elapsed, years of great and often painful change. Kenzie and Gennaro are now married and have a four-year-old daughter of their own. Angela works both as a student and a full-time mom, while Patrick scratches out a precarious living doing freelance investigative work that leaves him, all too often, feeling sordid and ethically compromised. In the country at large, the economy is in a shambles. Foreclosures, bankruptcies, and rising unemployment dominate the economic landscape, creating an almost palpable sense of desperation. Against this backdrop of global uncertainty and post-9/11 malaise, Patrick and his wife are forced to exhume some painful memories when Amanda McReady, now sixteen years old, goes missing once again.

This second search for Amanda is the central element of a carefully designed plot that is both a suspenseful, involving personal drama and a cogent examination of a world sliding rapidly out of control. The story begins in the familiar environs of Boston and ranges across the length and breadth of New England, ending with a violent confrontation in a dilapidated trailer park. Along the way, the narrative encompasses parental abuse of various kinds, identity theft, drug trafficking, illegal baby brokering, and murder. Familiar characters include the hopeless, hapless mother, Helene McReady, Bubba, the lethal behemoth who is Patrick’s closest friend, and, of course, Amanda herself, a former victim forced by circumstances to develop astonishing personal resources and equally astonishing survival skills. Joining them are a vivid gallery of characters from across the social spectrum, among them some of the most colorful–and appalling–Russian gangsters you are ever likely to encounter.

Like the best of Lehane’s earlier work, Moonlight Mile is a propulsive entertainment with a dark, sorrowful world-view at its core. With intelligence and grace, it raises serious issues of personal, parental, and social responsibility, and addresses the most fundamental question of all: How does one construct a worthwhile life? Patrick, who has spent so much of his own life in a world filled with violence, malice, and greed, finds himself forced to confront that question directly. The answers he finds–and the decisions he makes–are both surprising and inevitable, and bring this very welcome novel to a resonant, perfectly judged conclusion.