Darkness, Take My Hand (original 1996; edition 1997)

3 and a half stars. Picked the 2nd killer 3/4 way through. ( )

Someone is brutally killing people that Patrick knows and they are both on the case. The usual characters are there, which is nice since I have not read a Kenzie Gennaro book in a while.

after reading The Given Day and thinking what a great writer Dennis Lehane is, it is nice to realize that that wonderful writing style is also evident on his mysteries. I am a Dennis Lehane fan all the way. ( )

An interesting mystery about private detectives who get more drawn into a case then they would have liked. The character development and study of desensitization intrigued me, however, I felt it could have been expanded upon much more. There were numerous times when I did not want to put the book down. However, I did not feel the main characters were realistic, multi-faceted or "human" enough to hold my interest in the less intense periods. I enjoyed the straight forward writing, and the keeps-you-guessing story line, however, I thought it left a bit to be desired. It touches on some extremely intriguing concepts of inurement and the necessity of pain, but I felt it largely left those ideas out there, very separately, instead of drawing them into the story and the characters.

All in all a good read. But I was hoping for more. ( )

"Darkness Take My Hand" is the second in Dennis Lehane's series featuring private investigator team Patrick Kenzie and Angie Genhnaro. This series is on the extremely gritty end of the spectrum of books that I read, with more violence and harsh language than is my usual cuppa tea. I keep reading them for the same reason I keep reading James Lee Burke's series featuring Dave Robicheaux: the quality of the writing. Well-crafted, complex characters; descriptive writing that takes you to the setting with all your senses; plots with more twists and turns than a country mountain road; and just good, solid storytelling touching upon issues that make you think.

In this one, Kenzie & Gennaro are hired by a psychologist who believes her son is being threatened because the girlfriend of a mob henchman confided to her about a murder. But nothing is quite as it appears. As murder and mayhem break out in Kenzie's old Boston neighborhood, links are made with a series of 2-decade-old crimes, and dirty old secrets rise to the surface. And no one in Patrick Kenzie's inner circle is safe.

A monstrously good thriller! ( )

This is the second book of a series featuring Patrick Kenzie and Angie Genaro, partners in a private detective agency in a working-class section of Boston. That first book, A Drink Before the War dealt with a gang war, but Darkness, Take My Hand deal with a serial killer, and if the plot is fairly standard in that regard, this novel still stands out for style, setting and characters.

A blurb in the book compares Lehane to Chandler, MacDonald and Parker. I actually prefer Lehane to any of them. I recently read through a list of mystery recommendations that included all those authors and discovered I actually don't usually care for the hard-boiled detective genre that includes those authors, even when the author is a fine stylist. (To Chandler and MacDonald I'd add Dashiel Hammett, Walter Mosley and James Lee Burke as impressive in that regard within that genre.)

Yet with the possible exception of Hammett, you won't see me read more books by those other authors. In the end I find hard-boiled too cynical, too gritty and too many of the typical hard-boiled detectives are damn unlikable, little more than thugs. (Philip Marlowe, I'm looking at you!) And that is what sets Lehane apart. Because though the milieu Kenzie works in is dangerous, corrupt, at times bleak, there's a core of decency that runs through him, a sense of humor--and more than that--caring. The detectives of those other books are solitary, isolated and grim. But Kenzie has friends, and above all he has his partner Angie, and that makes all the difference to me. It's the humor, the way Lehane brings the mean streets of Boston to life, but above all that relationship between Angie and Patrick that will keep me reading the series. ( )