Skip to main content

More of somethings...

When I started getting into Crime Fiction in a serious way, what that meant was, I started going to bookstores that exclusively sold the stuff. For me that is, and now sadly was, the Milwaukee store Mystery One run by the great Richard Katz. I can't be sure what I bought that first visit.... I think it might have been CROSSROAD BLUES by Ace Atkins.  Richard quizzed me on my likes and I am pretty certain [Editor's Note: Or at least as certain as one can be in a blog post.] that he recommended Dennis Lehane's first book, A DRINK BEFORE THE WAR.

I promptly went home and ordered the book from Amazon. Sorry, Richard. As a way of an apology, for as long as I lived in Milwaukee I purchased every subsequent book Mr. Lehane released at Mystery One. It was the best place to turn a pastime into a passion. Places like Mystery One and writers like Dennis Lehane are a perfect combination to draw you in.

Driving to work recently, I was trying to figure out what I like about Mr. Lehane's writing and by extension SINCE WE FELL...which is upper echelon Lehane. You'll enjoy it. Read it. I settled on the fact that Mr. Lehane is a talented chronicler of the interior lives of his characters and the stories they live. He writes a thousand small stories that in the end make up a life which in turn make up a compelling novel.

Now he is not infallible. To my eyes, his last two Kenzie-Gennaro books can only be charitably rated as disappointments. I could not help wonder if Mr. Lehane was stung by the middling response to THE GIVEN DAY and retreated to give us MOONLIGHT MILE. However, every inch of that book screams a near-complete disinterest in the endeavor. And that is a shame. The epitaph to two of the most original characters in Crime Fiction of the last two twenty years will be that book. [Editor's Note: I wrote this post a while ago, and have been sitting on it. I think because of this paragraph where for some reason or another I go out of my way to criticize a writer I hold in the highest regard. Particularly as I pick out two books published almost a decade ago. Of course, it is easy to say he screwed with his legacy, he 100% does not see it that way. And let's face it if Dennis Lehane will be remembered it will be for everything he did after the K+G books.]

Somewhere up there I said SINCE WE FELL is top rate Dennis Lehane. As a writer of Crime Fiction, he is almost without peer...James Lee Burke for life y'all. However, it is more accurate at this point to remove the 'Crime Fiction' part of the above statement and say Dennis Lehane is a writer almost without peer.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is it 'Aughts' or 'Oughts' - The Best of the Decade Pt. II

Better late than what quite possibly could have been never. I found the whole task of formulating and compiling this list to be not very enjoyable. Ugh. Not sure why this list proved laborious to produce. Holidays are not a good time for anything except opening gifts... like a 47" LG LCD television. Let's quit with the complaining and finish the list. If you started here you should go back to the beginning . 5 . DIRT - Sean Doolittle (2001) This was a real toss up for me. I could just as easily gone with the funny and brutal THE CLEAN UP. DIRT gets it by a nose because a lot of what I enjoy about Crime Fiction is discovery. THE CLEAN UP is a great book, one that you should read, but I knew it was going to be good going in. Mr. Doolittle is a terrific writer of human frailty. DIRT contains one of the great truisms of human behavior that we frantically keep secrets from our closest friends and family while just as equally hoping these secrets will be discovered and accepted. I ...
4 comments
Read more

The Very Best of Mr. Michael Connelly - Part 2

My August 31 post of The Hungry Detective ranked all the non-Bosch books. This list returns to take on the larger task of Mr. Heironimous Bosch. 9 Dragons made its appearance right before the Indy B'Con, and try as I might... ok I didn't try that hard... I didn't have time to read it for inclusion in these rankings. As a quick aside I don't want to undersell any of the books at the bottom of the list. Mr. Connelly doesn't know how to write a bad book, but in my case there have been occasions where I have not connected with his work. 13. THE NARROWS - 2004 It is because I love THE POET so much that this book is at the end of the list. When Mr. Connelly is at his best his works has the precision of a watchmaker. THE NARROWS just felt forced and not worthy of the intricacy of THE POET. 12. BLACK ICE - 1993 Second book. Third read. I thought the story was pretty flat. It has been well over a decade since I read this book, but the story of Mexican drug runner...
1 comment
Read more

Murder, Mayhem and the Return of Patrick and Angie

Back from Murder and Mayhem in Muskego IV . It was an ultimately very good weekend if not for a few hiccups. The original intention was to attend the mini-con with my sister who lives in Appleton. Alas, she caught one of the fifty or so colds she will have in the next three months. Everyone at The Hungry Detective office hopes she feels better, and we are already looking forward to attending the fifth installment with her next year. The second minor disappointment was the, I'm sure, entirely unavoidable absences of Duane Swierczynski and Harry Hunsicker . Bummer. (Ed Note. Duane's twitter feed notes a Christening... Cheers to that Mr. Swierczynski!) All of this is, of course, is weighted by the very wonderful news that Dennis Lehane , after taking the balance of a year off after finishing The Given Day, is writing a new book. And it is a Kenzie and Gennaro book. Woo-Hoo! In terms of my own education about Crime Fiction, Dennis is an important figure. I was reading a lot by the...
4 comments
Read more