Category: Dennis Lehane

Opening Lines: The Blonde Identity by Ally Carter

Head & Shoulders used to tell us that, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” That’s true for wearing dark shirts, and it’s especially true for books. Sometimes the characters will hook the reader, sometimes the premise, sometimes it’s just knowing the author—but nothing beats a great opening for getting a reader to commit. This is one of the better openings I’ve heard recently. Would it make you commit?

Here’s the thing about waking up with no memory in the middle of the night, in the middle of the street, in the middle of Paris: at least you’re waking up in Paris. Or so the woman thought as she lay on the cold ground, staring up through a thick layer of falling snow at the Eiffel Tower’s twinkling lights.

She didn’t know about the bruise that was growing on her temple.

She didn’t see the drops of blood that trailed along the frosty white ground.

And she absolutely, positively didn’t remember why she was lying in the street like someone who had tried to make a snow angel and fell asleep midswoop.

I should finish my angel, she thought.

I should get up.

I should go home.

But she didn’t actually know where home was, she realized. So why not take a nap right there? It seemed like an excellent plan. After all, the snow was fluffy and soft, and the world was quiet and still; and sleep was such a wonderful thing. Really, the best thing. She didn’t know her own name, but she was certain that sleep had to be her favorite hobby ever, so why not close her eyes and drift off for a little while? Really, no one would blame her.

from The Blonde Identity by Ally Carter
The Blonde Identity Cover

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Opening Lines: Sacred by Dennis Lehane

Head & Shoulders used to tell us that, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” That’s true for wearing dark shirts, and it’s especially true for books. Sometimes the characters will hook the reader, sometimes the premise, sometimes it’s just knowing the author—but nothing beats a great opening for getting a reader to commit. This is the third book in one of my favorite series (and the fourth I’d read when I first encountered it), so I was pre-commited when I picked it up. But if I’d never read Lehane before, this would’ve done it for me.

A piece of advice: If you ever follow someone in my neighborhood, don’t wear pink.

The first day Angie and I picked up the little round guy on our tail, he wore a pink shirt under a gray suit and a black topcoat. The suit was double-breasted, Italian, and too nice for my part of town by several hundred dollars. The topcoat was cashmere. People in my neighborhood could afford cashmere, I suppose, but usually they spend so much on the duct tape that keeps their tail pipes attached to their ’82 Chevys, that they don’t have much left over for anything but that trip to Aruba.

The second day, the little round guy replaced the pink shirt with a more subdued white, lost the cashmere and the Italian suit, but still stuck out like Michael Jackson in a day care center by wearing a hat. Nobody in my neighborhood–or any of Boston’s inner-city neighborhoods that I know of–wears anything on their head but a baseball cap or the occasional tweed Scally. And our friend, the Weeble, as we’d come to call him, wore a bowler. A fine-looking bowler, don’t get me wrong, but a bowler just the same.

“He could be an alien,” Angie said. I looked out the window of the Avenue Coffee Shop. The Weeble’s head jerked and then he bent to fiddle with his shoelaces.

“An alien,” I said. “From where exactly? France?”

She frowned at me and lathered cream cheese over, bagel so strong with onions my eyes watered just looking at it. “No, stupid. From the future. Didn’t you ever see that old Star Trek where Kirk and Spock ended wp on earth in the thirties and were hopelessly out of step?”

“I hate Star Trek.”

“But you’re familiar with the concept.”

I nodded, then yawned. The Weeble studied a telephone pole as if he’d never seen one before. Maybe Angie was right.

“How can you not like Star Trek?” Angie said.

“Easy. I watch it, it annoys me, I turn it off.”

“Even Next Generation?”

“What’s that?” I said.

“When you were born,” she said, “I bet your father held you up to your mother and said, ‘Look, hon, you just gave birth to a beautiful crabby old man.'”

“What’s your point?” I said.

from Sacred by Dennis Lehane
Sacred

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Finally Fall Book Tag


While reading these posts on Bookidote, beforewegoblog, and The Witty & Sarcastic Bookclub, I noticed myself mentally composing this list—so I figure I had to join in the fun. I’d have posted this last week, but my free laborer realized how little he was getting paid and decided to play video games instead of generating my graphic.

Naturally, I only paid half of his fee.

Enough of that, bring on the Autumn! (even if it feels like Winter here in Idaho):

In Fall, the air is crisp and clear. Name a book with a vivid setting.

The Last of the Really Great WhangdoodlesThe Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles by Julie Edwards

I had a hard time coming up with something for this one, honestly. But Whangdoodleland was so vivid that I can still picture parts of it, despite having read it only once in the last 30+ years.


Nature is beautiful…but also dying. Name a book that is beautifully written, but also deals with a heavy topic, like loss or grief.

A Monster CallsA Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

When I posted about it, I said, “I’m not convinced that this is really all that well-written, technically speaking. But it packs such an emotional wallop, it grabs you, reaches down your throat and seizes your heart and does whatever it wants to with it—so who cares how technically well it’s written? (and, yeah, I do think the two don’t necessarily go together). A couple of weeks from now, I may not look back on this as fondly—but tonight, in the afterglow? Loved this.” I still look back on it as fondly, for the record.


Fall is Back to School Season. Name a Nonfiction Book that Taught You Something.

TimekeepersTimekeepers: How the World Became Obsessed With Time by Simon Garfield

If I’m going to read a non-fiction book, it had better teach me something or I’ll end up ranting about it for days/weeks/months! This one popped to mind, though. In my post about the book, I said: “Did I learn something from the book? Much more than I expected to. The chapter on the French experiments alone probably taught me enough to justify the whole book. I didn’t/couldn’t stick with the details of watch-making (I have a hard time visualizing that kind of detail), but even that was fascinating and informative on the surface. Most topics broadened my understanding and taught me something. Also, the sheer amount of trivia that I picked up was great (the amount of time spent recording the first Beatles LP, why pop music tends to be about 3 minutes long, etc., etc.).”


In order to keep warm, it’s good to spend some time with the people we love. Name a fictional family/household/friend-group that you’d love to be a part of.

Nero Wolfe trioThe Household of Nero Wolfe from the books by Rex Stout

(yeah, that picture is from the A&E TV show, not exactly the books—but in that image in particular, they look just about perfect)

There were many families/groups/households that I could’ve picked for this, but that Brownstone on West 35th Street is near the Platonic ideal for a place to live—I’d love to spend time with Mr. Wolfe, Archie and Fritz (not to mention Saul, Fred, Orrie, Lily, Lon . . .)


The colorful leaves are piling up on the ground. Show us a pile of Autumn-colored spines.


(I thought this was going to be hard, but in the end, I had to not make the pile bigger!)

Also…wow, clearly, I’m not a photographer. It’s a shame I don’t live closer to my pal, Micah Burke, things around here would look much spiffier.


Fall is the perfect time for some storytelling by the fireside. Share a book wherein somebody is telling a story.

A Plague of GiantsA Plague of Giants by Kevin Hearne

That’s really 90% of the book—a bard telling stories. How he pulls this off, really impressed me.

(Hammered by Kevin Hearne would also qualify, but I liked the storytelling in this one better)


The nights are getting darker. Share a dark, creepy read.

Darkness Take My HandDarkness Take My Hand by Dennis Lehane

This one disturbs me every time I read it (4-6 I think), I still remember having to sleep with the lights on after I stayed up reading it until 2-3 in the morning the first time—I doubt I was a very good employee the next day. (Sacred maybe is creepier, but this is the better book by Lehane)


The days are getting colder. Name a short, heartwarming read that could warm up somebody’s cold and rainy day.

WonderWonder by R. J. Palacio

The “short” in the category is the sticky wicket. But this is a quick read (even if the page number is higher than I’d count as “short.” Formulaic? Yup. Predictable? You betcha. Effective? Abso-smurfly. Textbook example of heartwarming.


Fall returns every year. Name an old favorite that you’d like to return to soon.

Magic Kingdom for Sale — SOLD!Magic Kingdom for Sale — SOLD! by Terry Brooks

Ive been thinking about this book a lot since Bookstooge’s Quick Fire Fantasy post. Gotta work this into the 2020 reading schedule.

I’m tagging any blogger who reads this. Play along.

Dusted Off: Prayers for Rain by Dennis Lehane

Prayers for RainPrayers for Rain by Dennis Lehane
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

better than Sacred, but not as good as the rest of the series. Some of the character development was more of a reset to pre-Gone, Baby, Gone status. How odd was it that Bubba was the only character to really have any growth?

Patrick Kenzie talks often of his tiring of the PI biz, not sure if he had it in him any more, it wasn’t fun. How much of this is Patrick and how much is Lehane speaking through him? Tough call. ‘tho the decade or so that Lehane took away from the series is a pretty good hint, I think.

Good read, creepy bad guy, with an iffy ending. Still better than many things I’ve read this year, while not Lehane’s best.

Dusted Off: Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane

Moonlight Mile (Kenzie & Gennaro,#6)Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I don’t think I’ve the original context of the remark, but I’ve seen it often enough that I don’t doubt the veracity. But at some point Dennis Lehane characterized his Kenzie/Gennaro series as the kind of books that a guy in his twenties would write, as an explanation for why he’d moved on. Now, first of all, I don’t blame a guy for not wanting to get stuck in a rut, to only write one thing his entire life (no matter how good he is at it). But that always struck me as an uncharacteristically dumb thing to say. What’s that say about 1. the authors outside of their 20s who are writing the same kind of thing and 2. those of us out of our 20s who like to read that kind of thing.

Frankly, I thought that Shutter Island was more like something a guy in his 20s would write (particularly the ending) than anything else he wrote.

But hey, it’s his opinion, and he’s entitled to it — as long as he writes things more interesting than The Given Day (which, to be fair, I haven’t been able to get too far into, it’s fully possible that if I’d read another two pages, I’d have loved it).

Still, imagine my surprise when I learned that a new Kenzie/Gennaro book was coming out.

It’s a lighter read than the previous five books in the series, but it still carries that trademark Lehane punch. This book sure seems like a self-conscious attempt to stress the fact that our heroes, like the author, aren’t in their twenties. They’ve aged, matured, get tired more easily want nothing to do with the violence that so marked their younger years. They’re not the only ones who aged, Amanda McCready, the kidnapped girl from Gone Baby Gone is missing again, and again, he aunt calls upon Kenzie to find her.

By the end, Lehane takes his characters to an interesting (and predictable place) that probably closes the door to future installments — not unlike what Riordan did to Tres Nevarre and what Koryta may have done to his PIs. I hope it’s not the last I see of these two, but can understand why it would be.

In the end, a satisfying read. Better than many PI novels that came out this year, but not as good as it could’ve been.

Dusted Off: Gone, Baby, Gone by Dennis Lehane

Gone, Baby, Gone (Kenzie & Gennaro, #4)Gone, Baby, Gone by Dennis Lehane
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Kenzie and Gennaro are hired by the aunt of a missing 4 year old girl, who’s been missing so long that good news is almost impossible. Following a trail started by her worthless mother leads the pair and the police to drug dealers (small time and large), child molesters and other monsters and a tangled web so intricate that it makes what the protagonists have been through before seem like a picnic.

This book was my first exposure to Lehane, and turned me into a devotee for life (probably). Even though I’ve read this 4-5 times, it had me on the edge of my seat, and got me choked up and horrified by the evil depicted.

Best.Thing.He’s.Written. (not that I’ve read the new one yet)

Dusted Off: Sacred by Dennis Lehane

Sacred (Kenzie & Gennaro, #3)Sacred by Dennis Lehane
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Easily the weakest Kenzie/Gennaro book, and I don’t know why. On this, like every other, re-read, I’ve tried to a. convince myself I really like this one or b. put my finger on what seems wrong with this one, and I can’t do either.

Drives me crazy.

Oh well, Gone, Baby Gone is up next.

Dusted Off: Darkness, Take My Hand by Dennis Lehane

Darkness, Take My Hand (Kenzie & Gennaro, #2)Darkness, Take My Hand by Dennis Lehane
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I’ve read this 4 or 5 times now, still got tense at all the right spots (thankfully, it was the middle of the day this time so I wasn’t quite as jumpy as usual). Pretty sure that’s a sign of an author who knows what he’s doing. Not the best of the series, which isn’t taking away anything from this one, just saying how good some of the others (like Gone, Baby Gone) are.

Dusted Off: A Drink Before the War by Dennis Lehane

A Drink Before the War (Kenzie & Gennaro, #1)A Drink Before the War by Dennis Lehane
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

wanted to read these before #5 comes out next month, just to get back in that world–it’s been too long since I’ve read a Lehane I liked. Took me less than a page to remember why I got into Kenzie/Gennaro, and within 5 it was like I’d been reunited with a long-lost love. This is a great read–the language, the plot, the characters…really can’t ask for more.

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