For me, Dennis Lehane is one of the top-tier thriller writers. This second instalment in his Kenzie & Gennaro series builds slowly, relying entirely on character and mood - built from the first-person observations of Boston PI Patrick Kenzie as he describes the crazily changeable weather of a Massachusetts autumn, violence in the news, and hints at the events of the past season that have left him untethered.
This prologue sets a dark, foreboding mood, before the story starts in classic detective story style with a friend calling to recommend a prospective client, and setting up the meeting, all set against the easy back and forth banter between Kenzie and his partner in investigation and friend since childhood, Angie Gennaro. Although we are a hundred pages in before the first crime occurs, the book is never less than gripping as Lehane builds the characters, their world and relationships and history. The investigation lead the pair into situations smouldering with the threats of sudden and fatal violence. Once the first body turns up, the author begins the steadily crank the already building tension, and this doesn't let up for the rest of the book.
This first body seems separate to the pair's investigation but, of course, it is no spoiler to say that everything is connected, or ( if you've read the cover blurb, or the signs in the writing ) that this is a serial killer book. And, fair warning, steer clear if you don't like graphic violence. I'd forgotten how disturbing Lehane can get in his writing, but the most uncomfortable scenes are not those of actual violence but those where some of the worst characters in the book talk. One conversation in particular, with Kevin Hurlihy - a contemporary of the leads who is now a mob enforcer - still stains my thoughts.
Kenzie seems to surround himself with damaged, dangerous people - as well as Kevin, the mobsters, and the killers he investigates, there is Bubba, another childhood friend of himself and Gennaro who is a "good guy" only inasmuch as he deeply loves them both and will do anythings for them - however, Kenzie points out that the two are literally the only things in the universe he cares about and anything, or any body, else is utterly disposable.
The serial killer story has shades of The Silence of the Lambs ( and, Darkness was published in 1996, probably a deliberate nod to it ), but a huge difference with many other serial killer books is not only a complete refusal to lionise the killers - they are not geniuses, they are not extraordinary, they are not even inhuman ( they are, as he point out, very human even though they are the worst of us; they are Auschwitz and Belsen and Bosnia ) - they are, to quote Michael Marshall at the end of a page-long rant on this very subject "just fucking monsters that destroy" - but Lehane is a master at showing the effects: the utter devastation of loss and violence and cruelty visited upon the innocent without logic or reason or cause. The effects of just moving in that world, with Patrick Kenzie as the prime example.
Darkness, Take My Hand is not a flawless book; there are some moments when hints are dropped a little heavily, others where equally weighty red herrings proffered, and a couple of character moments that raise eyebrows but this can easily be forgiven in this superbly written, completely gripping, and hugely effective and affecting thriller.
I'll definitely be continuing with the series however, as I think I may have said after reading A Drink Before the War, I feel I will have to walk around in the sunlight for some time before I feel strong enough to re-enter the Boston of Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro.
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