The Final Chapter

Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane

I just finished reading Moonlight Mile, the sixth and, I believe, final novel of Dennis Lehane’s Kenzie-Gennaro series. Like its five predecessors, Moonlight Mile features the quick wit and snappy back & forth between partner private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro. Published eleven years after the fifth book in the series, though, this one features a more mature relationship between the two.

Patrick and Angie are in their early forties now. Their minds and bodies have aged. They can’t do what they used to do. They can’t recover as quickly. Along with that, they take a more macroscopic view of the world around them. Still, they are who they are. Their principles have not changed, even if the manner in which they apply them has. Right and wrong mean different things than they used to.

All in all, I found Moonlight Mile to be a fine conclusion to the series. It’s not pretty. Nothing involving Patrick and Angie has ever been pretty, so it would have been disingenuous of Lehane to conclude their tale in any other way. Their lives are messy, complicated, dark, and filled with choices and sacrifices that would drive many people to a nonfunctioning level of mental instability. That does not change here.

While each novel in the series stands on its own, I highly recommend reading all six novels in chronological order. At the very least, I believe one should read Gone,Baby, Gone before picking up Moonlight Mile. Reading this book before Gone,Baby, Gone will rob the reader of many of the emotions that I felt while I read this week.

The primary plot of Moonlight Mile involves Kenzie and Gennaro trying, once again, to find Amanda McCready. The pair had found four-year old Amanda in Gone,Baby, Gone and returned her to her disinterested mother. In this final installment of the Kenzie-Gennaro series, Patrick and Angie learn that sixteen-year old Amanda has disappeared from her still disinterested mother. The first time they searched for Amanda, the detectives dealt with pedophiles and police. This time, they face Russian mobsters. And Amanda is no longer an innocent fragile little girl. Now she is fearless. And brilliant.

Sixteen-year old Amanda is, in my opinion, the most fascinating character Lehane created throughout the series. She survived a hell of a childhood and grew into a completely self-aware and self-assure young woman. She is without a doubt the least distressed damsel that ever needed rescuing. Throughout the novel I felt as if Patrick and Angie were trying to rescue a rising serial killer. Amanda is, in my mind, a psychopath. But a sympathetic one. One I rooted for until the very last page.

Unlike the first five novels, this one is not about Kenzie and Gennaro. Yes, they are the main characters and entire novel is told through Patrick’s first-person narrative. But Moonlight Mile is all about Amanda, who she’s become, what lies in her future, what created the person she became, and how she deals with the world.

No matter what happens to Amanda, the tale can’t help but to be sad. The events of Gone,Baby, Gone messed her up permanently. Those changes can never be undone. Amanda accepts them and works her way through them. Even in her psychosis, Amanda McCready is a heroic figure, and that is Moonlight Mile’s greatest success.

I was disappointed by the absence of Bubba. He only appeared for a couple of scenes, but none of them contained the Bubba that I’d grown to love over the course of the first five books. I understand, though. As I said earlier, Patrick and Angie are older; they are more mature. Their lives are different. To a certain degree, they had graduated from Bubba’s world.

Another, greater, disappointment was the beginning. The first few chapters were slow. After all those years away from writing them, it seemed as if Lehane had to work his way back into his Kenzie-Gennaro comfort zone. Once we finally meet Angie, everything is fine and the rhythm is back. It just took a while to get there.

Overall, I loved it. And if you like the series, I think you will like it, too.

A-