ericwelch 's review for:

Gone, Baby, Gone by Dennis Lehane

4.0

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The search for more writers in the hard-boiled detective genre continues, and Lehane can be added to the list. There’s nothing more pleasurable than a cynical, wise-cracking detective. For example, Boston private eyes Patrick McKenzie and partner Angela Gennaro become involved in a child disappearance case. The mother, Helene, is a sleaze, more interested in watching Jerry Springer and the soaps and getting herself on TV than in caring for her child, and the two detectives soon discover the little girl has become a pawn in a kidnapping for ransom – Helene had been involved in the theft of $200,000 from a drug czar who wants his money back. Boston has a neighborhood called Charleston that was the original Boston site, but it was soon abandoned after the Pilgrims discovered the water to be inexplicably brackish. They crossed the narrow channel taking the Boston name with them. Those who live there now have been historically reluctant to deal with authorities; it’s home to many generations of dockworkers, fishermen and merchant mariners. “This adherence to keeping one’s mouth shut even extends to simple directions. Ask a townie how to get to such-and-such street and his eyes will narrow. ‘The F__k you doing here if you don’t know where you’re going?’ might be the polite response, followed by an extended middle finger if he really likes you.” Is the precise way Lehane describes the difficulty of an investigation in Charleston. I love it. The kidnapping evolves into an infuriating sequence of events, and none of them seems to make sense to the detectives. The mother of the child had apparently been involved with drug-dealers, and the child was being held in exchange for money the mother had stolen. Someone murders the drug dealers during the supposed exchange for the money and one of them, we learn, may have been a DEA agent. The ending resolves into a moral conundrum for the two detectives that breaks up their partnership. Rogue policemen had instigated a scheme to save abused children by stealing them and placing them into good homes, completely bypassing the system, and this case revealed the layers of secrecy that surrounded their plan.