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A review by ericwelch
Prayers for Rain by Dennis Lehane
4.0
Karen Nichols, a seemingly perfect prime and proper young lady, hires private detective Patrick Kenzie to warn off Cody Falk, a stalker who has a history of rape and abuse of women. Patrick and his new sidekick, Bubba, who has the face of a deranged two-year-old but with the physique of a “steel boxcar with limbs” pay Cody a visit. Bubba rearranges Cody’s car and they leave with suitable threats of potential carnage should anything happen to Karen. Six months later Karen jumps naked from a six story building and Patrick wants to learn what happened.
He learns that Karen’s boyfriend had been killed in a car accident and that she had been raped before her descent into drugs and despair. But he also discovers that someone had been setting her up.
Feeling somewhat contrite at one point, Patrick decides to attend Mass in spite of being more than a lapsed Catholic. He’s astonished by the priest’s short sermon. “Father McKendrick definitely had Red Sox tickets. The parishioners looked dazed, but happy. The only thing good Catholics love more than God is a short service. Keep your organ music, your choir, keep your incense and processionals. Give us a priest with one eye on the Bible and the other on the clock, and we’ll pack the place like it’s a turkey raffle the week before Thanksgiving.”
In a previous book in the series, Patrick had split up with his onagain-offagain sweetheart and investigative partner, Angie Gennaro. This case gets them back together. They need to discover why Karen had slowly descended into a quagmire of drugs and prostitution before committing suicide. They discover that her fiancé might have been deliberately killed in what had apparently purely an accident while crossing the street.. Karen's family is uncooperative and clearly hiding something. The family secrets begin to unravel.
Despite some of its rather fantastical aspects — how convenient that Angie's grandfather is a mob boss with the power to call off the mob fangs at one point, and the level of evil strains credulity — this book reminds me a lot of some of Ross MacDonald’s better work, a peeling off of layers of ostensible respectability to reveal putrid corruption and evil permeating family relationships.
He learns that Karen’s boyfriend had been killed in a car accident and that she had been raped before her descent into drugs and despair. But he also discovers that someone had been setting her up.
Feeling somewhat contrite at one point, Patrick decides to attend Mass in spite of being more than a lapsed Catholic. He’s astonished by the priest’s short sermon. “Father McKendrick definitely had Red Sox tickets. The parishioners looked dazed, but happy. The only thing good Catholics love more than God is a short service. Keep your organ music, your choir, keep your incense and processionals. Give us a priest with one eye on the Bible and the other on the clock, and we’ll pack the place like it’s a turkey raffle the week before Thanksgiving.”
In a previous book in the series, Patrick had split up with his onagain-offagain sweetheart and investigative partner, Angie Gennaro. This case gets them back together. They need to discover why Karen had slowly descended into a quagmire of drugs and prostitution before committing suicide. They discover that her fiancé might have been deliberately killed in what had apparently purely an accident while crossing the street.. Karen's family is uncooperative and clearly hiding something. The family secrets begin to unravel.
Despite some of its rather fantastical aspects — how convenient that Angie's grandfather is a mob boss with the power to call off the mob fangs at one point, and the level of evil strains credulity — this book reminds me a lot of some of Ross MacDonald’s better work, a peeling off of layers of ostensible respectability to reveal putrid corruption and evil permeating family relationships.