Customer Reviews

Gone, Baby, Gone

5 star:		(97)
4 star:		(46)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Gone, Baby, Gone is one of Lehane's best Kenzie/Gennaro books, even though its subject matter, the kidnapping and abuse of children, isn't particularly sunny. Patrick and Angela are called on to investigate the disappearance of four-year-old Amanda McCready, who lives with an awful, distracted, zero of a mother. Her inattention to her daughter and her needs is painted so vividly that it is easy to hope that, wherever she is, Amanda's life is somehow better. This disappearance leads the detectives into a morass of drug dealers and pedophiles and crooked police.

Ultimately, it all leads to a gripping, heart-breaking climax that is pretty much a no-win situation for all involved. Sure, there are some contrivances in the plot that bring us to this point--as other reviewers have pointed out--but this is still one heck of a powerful book, with vivid characters and a real sense of setting and community. We can see how the neighborhood gives birth to monsters like Cheese Olamon and Angie's and Patrick's "friend" Bubba, while others choose another route for their lives. This is a step up from the previous book, Sacred, and shows Lehane getting ready for the powerhouse book to come, Mystic River.

This fourth book in this great series is Lehane's best one yet. The ending is very thought provoking and will stay with you for awhile. One very important piece of information is NOT to read this book if you haven't read the previous three. Information is disclosed that gives away the endings of some of the previous novels so they work best when read in order. Believe me when I say you'll want to read all of them.

Reading about the scum of humanity that Lehane's Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro come up against is like watching a David Fincher movie. It's all grit staring you right in the face with unflinching honesty.The fourth book in the detective series has the duo searching for a missing child. In true Lehane fashion, there are more twists than a crazy straw, and the plot gets deeper and deeper and more horrifying as the truth comes out. Luckily there's the character of Bubba to add some needed comic relief to the story. A story that's hard to put down, and harder to shake when you finish it.

When Beatrice McCready and her husband ask Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro to help find a missing niece, the detective partners immediately realize that they do not want this case. At the end of three days, police have failed to turn up even a minor lead to the missing Amanda. Helene, Amanda's mother, is a drug addict and alcoholic who has raised the four-year-old child in near total neglect. This was a case with few possible good endings.

Kenzie and Gennaro are unable to resist Beatrice's pleas, though, and thus begins the harrowing tale of "Gone, Baby, Gone." As they dig away at a trail that leads to dead-end bars, drug dealers in prison and hints of child abuse the two detectives tease away at the mystery. When a shoot-out in a quarry nearly kills the detective team, the two realize that they are up against an evil that will stop at nothing to keep Amanda's fate a secret. An evil that corrupts everything it touches.

"Gone, Baby, Gone" is the grimmest of the Kenzie and Gennaro series. While not the most violent or horrific of the series, it eats away at you steadily as the detectives untangle Amanda's story. The fine narrative style and sparkling dialogue that marks a Lehane story draw you in and mesmerize you, but the little voice in your head never forgets that at the heart of this crime is a young child. You share in the anguish as betrayal destroys friendship, as right becomes wrong and relationships are strained to the breaking point.

Lehane has once again written the perfect balance between psychological thriller and devastating action story. "Gone, Baby, Gone" is not for the fainthearted. Long time Lehane fans will know what to expect, but newcomers might want to read some earlier novels in the series. This is intense noir fiction at it's best.

After reading my first Dennis Lehane book -- Gone, Baby, Gone -- all I can say is I'm hooked! Great plot, very well- developed and real characters and a writing style that makes you want to finish the book in one sitting. I've just gone out and bought two others in the series --Sacred and Prayers For Rain -- and am looking for the others. If you like good,exciting mysteries, especially ones that depict real life situations (i,e, every outcome does not always have a happy ending), than add Lehane to your list of must-read authors!

I am a big fan of Dennis Lehane. His protago- nists, Patrick Kenzie and Angie Genarro have had a most interesting relationship in the first three books. Also, the plot lines have been incredibly captivating. How could Lehane tell a better story? Well, he did. I kind of ho-hummed at the beginning of the book with the kidnapping of a 4 year old girl. But after about the first 50 pages the ho-humming stopped. This was a 2 day engrossing read. The plot twists and all the tears I shed have put this on my list of favorite books. Lehane is a master of character, plot, and motive. I honestly couldn't see where this book was going. Can't wait to see what happens to Patrick and Angie in the next one.

Well I have found a new favorite author. I picked up Dennis Lehane's newest book "Prayers For Rain" at the bookstore, and up until that day I had never heard of him before, well thats changed and i finished the last of all his books last night. Gone, Baby, Gone. Follows Patrick Kenzie and Angela Genarro around the Boston area (as usual with all Lehane books) This time in search of a young girl named Amanda McCready who has seemingly disappeared into thin air. With more plot twist's and changes of direction thand a snake this book will have you turned around backwards in no time. This book was well written with beleivable heros who grew up with little money, and even less of secure families, everything a good mystery should be but it is not for those with weak stomachs, with Kenzie and Genaro in the heart of the missing childs department of the Boston p.d., there are more stories of child creulty and neglect than you may want to hear. I suggest that everyone read Lehanes second book "Darkness, Take My Hand" before anyother books, i made the mistake of reading it last, and I already knew the outcome from all of the other Lehane books.

If you have not yet ridden the Lehane Express, jump on board and begin at the beginning. The mystery/detective series with Angela Gennaro and Patrick Kenzie might be the best and most consistent in the genre. Again Lehane is at the top of his form and brings to the fore a terrific story with characters that just keep coming at you. The subtle undertones of the story give it depth and engage the reader from the first pages through the last.

A child is kidnapped and Patrick and Angie are hired to help the police to locate her. The mother, if you can call her that and you couldn't if she wasn't genetically connected, put her child in danger with her lifestyle and poor decisions. The story moves forward at a good rhythm and pace towards the spiraling conclusion. Characters are thrown under the bus as the story expands to take in all of the spin-off subplots.

I highly recommend this book with a 4.5 star rating, but I am going to round it up to a 5. I almost gave it an outright 5, but it would have to perfect for that, and as you might agree, there is one minor weakness in this story for me, but it's a spoiler and I do not give those out in a review.

The new sequel to this story is on my desk and I will be reviewing it shortly.

...The Question: How did Dennis Lehane top his epic DARKNESS, TAKE MY HAND?

Coming off the disappointing middle of the Kenzie-Gennaro series, SACRED, I bought my copy of GONE hoping the inspiration or motivation to produce quality work had not drained from his creative mind. So one day in class I raised my hand and asked, "Mr. Lehane, sir, can we get back to the good stuff, please?"

Mr. Lehane responded by opening the floodgates and giving the world GONE, BABY, GONE.

When I think of this novel, I think of all the things that hooked me to Dennis Lehane's work in the beginning, starting with A DRINK BEFORE THE WAR and climaxing with DARKNESS, TAKE MY HAND. What he excelled at in DARKNESS he perfected in GONE: Superb dialogue, characters so deep and real you thought you'd bump into them on the street, fascinating storyline, and a taut, twisty mystery that keeps you guessing, capping off with a shocking conclusion. These are the things that made Lehane's novels beloved in the beginning, and after fiddling around with a lesser story in SACRED, he finally got back to the good stuff indeed.

The best aspect of GONE? The emotional pull on the reader. Lehane doesn't flinch when it comes to making the reader address the uncomfortable questions presented by the characters' dilemmas. I cared about each character, bad or good, and the slam-bang ending made me sympathize with them--and consider the larger issue--even more. It offers no easy answers, and the decisions made at the end threaten Kenzie and Gennaro's lifelong bond.

The subject matter doesn't make this an easy story to read, but it's the best story Lehane's written to date, beating out even MYSTIC RIVER. Pick up GONE, BABY, GONE for a look at one of the best, most moving mysteries of the last decade.

Investigating the kidnapping of four-year-old Amanda McCready, daughter of a neglectful single mother/druggie/barfly in Dorchester, Massachusetts, private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro get caught up in one of their most challenging cases. The fourth in the Kenzie/Gennaro series by Lehane, this case is not "just" a kidnapping on their home turf. The pair also investigates Cheese Olamon, a Scandinavian giant they knew when they were growing up--now a drug dealer with serious underworld connections, a convict and enforcer. Amanda's mother has been involved with Olamon and may have lucked into a $200,000 payoff meant for him, within moments of Cheese's arrest and incarceration. No one knows what happened to the money or whether it is related to the kidnapping of Amanda.

Investigators Kenzie and Gennaro, who live together, become emotionally involved in this wrenching case, tracking down clues that suggest that Amanda is dead. They are also forced to deal with renegade members of the Boston Police, who do their own enforcing, which is faster and easier than dealing with the justice system. Some of these renegades have their own secrets to hide, and Kenzie and Gennaro soon prove to be dangerous to them. Meetings in the woods at night, shootouts, executions, crosses and double-crosses leave Kenzie and Gennaro no closer to finding Amanda, and time is running out.

Always adept at creating characters, Lehane creates new conflicts here between Kenzie and Gennaro as they deal with their discoveries and try to agree on their actions. Do they follow the book, or do they do what is "just"? Can they even agree on what justice is? Throughout the novel, their past relationships with people from Dorchester whom they have known all their lives provide additional complications, at the same time that they create great reader identification as the two private investigators operate in their home neighborhood. As characters, one by one, meet their deaths, the tensions and sense of forboding rise, until Kenzie and Gennaro are close to the breaking point, both personally and as a couple.

Combining snappy and realistic dialogue with outstanding description, Lehane shows Kenzie and Gennaro dealing with people who live on the fringes, those who do whatever it takes to get by and never second guess their choices. Often as violent as the criminals and police with whom they are engaged, Kenzie and Gennaro face crises here which test their relationship, endanger their lives, and force them to decide what is right--one of their best cases. n Mary Whipple