Delving Into Darkness

Darkness, Take My Hand by Dennis Lehane

It is easy to see Dennis Lehane's growth as an author while reading Darkness, Take My Hand. All of the characters are much more fully developed than in A Drink Before the War. Their relationships with each other have grown. One of the pitfalls of many series is that the authors develop one or two relationships as the series progresses, but all relationships change over time. Lehane did a masterful job of developing and changing all of the relationships between Patrick, Angie, Bubba, Devin, and Oscar. In this novel, these people are very real.

In Darkness, Take My Hand, the author delves deep into dark moral depravity and pure evil. This novel was very much what I had thought and hoped The Dark Knight would be as a film. This book succeeded where that movie failed.

Lehane's writing is intense. There are no down times. Instead, there is a good mix of action with mental tension. Even though the entire novel is written in the first person from Patrick's point of view, we are able to get into all these people's heads and see who they really are, what they are really about. This seems to be Lehane's greatest strength as a writer.

Also, this novel was able to explore homosexuality in a very real way. Much like he handled race and racism in A Drink Before the War, Lehane was able to put the characters into positions that forced them to deal with and acknowledge thoughts and emotions that normally never rise above the subsconscience. This is a quality that makes him stand out among many other writers.

There were two things, though, that diminished the novel in my eyes. Ironically, the first is the result of Lehane putting us into his characters' heads. I figured out the identity of the killer less than halfway through. I thought it was too obvious, and every clue thereafter only confirmed what I already knew.

The other was worse; it was a bad decision that I do not feel the character would have made. It wasn't The Talented Mr. Ripley bad, but it was bad nonetheless. Without spoiling, I can say that photos of unidentified people found in a suspect's dwelling would have been shown to Patrick and Angie. That was a big mistake. Darkness, Take My Hand, would have been an A- or B+ book without it.

C+