As MOONLIGHT MILE continues to hold steady in the UK top 20 and the Irish top ten for the third week in a row, the praise has started to roll in!
The Daily Mail declared Dennis Lehane to be “one of the great contemporary American crime writers,” and plenty of other critics seem to agree! More praise from across the pond after the jump.
The Independent says:
Moonlight Mile is an excellent thriller because it takes its competent hero and heroine and puts them out of their depth. The very integrity with which they approach life – and their sense that victims and villains can be told apart – makes them vulnerable. Lehane is as skilful as ever with plot, action and an evocative sense of Boston’s suburbs, but the real strength of this coda to a series lies in the way it interrogates and subverts the values on which the books – and their genre – are built.
More praise from the Sunday Telegraph:
Dennis Lehane, now best known for Hollywood adaptations of his novels Mystic River and Shutter Island, was once content to write superior mysteries featuring a husband and wife team comprising Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro. Moonlight Mile reunites them – physically and professionally – to investigate the disappearance of a girl whose original departure caused them to split up. Confused? You won’t be as Lehane brilliantly uses an ethical dilemma – which comes first: the law or personal morality? – to explore the wintry wastes of Boston in the United States of Recession. The climactic bloodbath in which a bunch of grotesque Russians turn on each other is eclipsed by Kenzie’s personal epiphany which has him throw away his Colt .45 for ever. Still, one hopes it won’t be difficult for him to buy another one.
The Evening Standard chimes in:
The intriguing mystery can be encapsulated thus: five people walk into a room, two die but four walk out…
The ingenious solution is just one of the pleasures of this tale of Boston blues. Each character is described with economy and wit and the portrait of the detective duo’s spiky but loving marriage rings true.
There are several very messy deaths and yet the most impressive aspect of the novel is the way that Lehane shows the psychological effects of having to deal with damaged people day after day. It’s enough to make anyone, including Kenzie, decide to change their life.
Metro declares,” Moonlight Mile is a good thriller that doesn’t shy away from questions of moral responsibility, and maintains a quick-fire pace and winning line in repartee.”
Finally, according to the Sunday Herald, “This book reflects a dark mirror image of its predecessor, and is as tough and lean as The Given Day was long and detailed. Lehane creates strong characters through fast dialogue rather than descriptions. But writing a follow-up to an earlier novel and succumbing again to a series is not a step backwards. It boasts a combination of surface pace and moral depth that few can match.”
