Darkness, Take My Hand

Here I go again on the rollercoaster ride that is Dennis Lehane’s Kenzie and Gennaro series. I find that I need to leave quite a bit of time between each instalment. Don’t get me wrong. These books are very well-written in the Dennis Lehane style. But they are brutal and gut-wrenching, and extremely violent. And the wonderful writing style of Lehane makes them so very real and disturbing. I love Bubba, the one-man army and I love watching to see how his friendship with Patrick Kenzie plays out. In this case, what starts out as a simple disappearance case morphs into a case that rocks Kenzie and Angie to the core, and causes both to rearrange their thinking and their lives. This book may be one to keep you awake at night. It may show more cause you to have disturbing thoughts. It may consume you, but when you come out at the other end you’ll be waiting with bated breath to read the next one. These books are deeply dark and morbid but the writing, dialogue and characters wil leave you gasping for more. Not for the faint of heart, but perfect for those who enjoy a seriously good thriller. show less

This is the second in his Kenzie/Gennaro series. I read the first, A Drink Before the War some time ago, and remember liking the characters and the setting. But that's about all I remembered about it. This second installment is quite possibly the darkest and most brutal book I've ever read. The writing is excellent, and I was drawn into the story so far by the time it got seriously ugly that I was committed---it's like entering the Mines of Moria--the only way out is through. I couldn't leave things unresolved in the middle of the horror, so I barreled on. But I can't recommend the trip to anyone. I like 'em gritty, and I can take violence in crime thrillers (James Lee Burke can be pretty rough going, and I love his stuff), but show more apparently I have a limit. I think I've read enough of Lehane now.
Reviewed in 2013 show less

This is the second in Lehane’s Kenzie and Gennaro mystery/thriller series. Like the first (A Drink Before the War), it was somewhat hard to put down. It is tense, gritty, brutal noir about serial killings. No one is ever going to accuse these things of being cozy mysteries.

Having just read Rowling’s Career of Evil where the antagonist was also a serial killer, it was interesting to compare it to this one. Rowling’s had its violence and suspense but Lehane’s is just more—I’m not sure how to describe it—visceral and full of dread. You also deal with characters who, while completely engaging, are less polar opposites to their foes: instead of a black and white moral spectrum, let's call it black and gray.

I’d rate it a show more shade less than the first in the series, say 3.75 stars if I could award that number, because there was a touch of over-the-top at moments. But it’s still gripping. show less

Throw on your trenchcoat, suspend your disbelief and go along for a thrilling ride through a world of untold evil and unexpected redemption, courtesy of Dennis Lehane and his terminally romantically thwarted duo of private eyes, Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro. Boston is plagued by yet another series of brutal serial killings, but the modus operendi this time is crucifixion, not strangulation, and the victims seem random. But are they? When Angie and Patrick find themselves investigating a threat against the son of an old client, they find that there may be more commonality lurking among the fiend's victims than meets the private eye.
The tale unfolds through a series of horrific events, the ruminations and reminiscences of scores of show more unforgettable characters, and a jailhouse interview with the face of evil itself. The book is peppered with hard boiled detective speak straight out of Elmore Leonard, updated with references to "N'Sync" and Bill Clinton. The language is one of the many fun parts of the read, but it's the characters, and the age-old unfolding struggle between good and evil within each of them, that really give it merit.
A couple of drawbacks: the book is like a maze. It takes the concentration of Bobby Fischer, or at least a very elaborate flow chart, to keep all the characters and their histories and interrelationships straight. A lot of the violence and grotesquerie is gratuitous and a little insulting to the intelligence of the reader, as if he needs every salacious detail of disembowlment and dismemberment to keep him awake enough to wade through the plot's complexity. Nonetheless, don't take it too seriously, don't struggle overmuch with the minutiae, and the unique honesty of Lehane's prose, even while shamelessly derivative, will get under your skin. show less

Please don't read if you have not read the first book in this series since spoilers from that book are below.

Well I definitely liked this one more than the first book in the series. There is one plot hole that didn't make a lot of sense to me, but other than that I really liked how this book worked from beginning to end. It also was short, but the flow worked a lot more in this one, so I didn't notice the length of the book until I got to the end.

Patrick and Angie take a case looking into protecting the son of a psychiatrist. The woman believes her son's life is being threatened because she had a patient who was dating a local guy with connections to the mob. Once she broke things off, she claims the man became violent and threatened show more her. When a girl they grew up with winds up died (crucified) Patrick and Angie start to put the pieces together and realize that their first case and this recent death are connected.

Once again told in the first person, we have Patrick in a happy relationship with a woman and her young daughter. It feels a bit weird at first considering the fact that readers know how Patrick feels about Angie. Instead this is glossed over here and there with both of them (Patrick and Angie) being weird about it. Other than that I can honestly say that you can see in this one how smart Patrick is. He follows leads and puts things together. I really did like it when the light dawned so to speak.

Angie once again is just a mystery. Having only just Patrick's point of view really does hamper these books because we only can "read" his thoughts on her and what she's feeling or we have the character telling Patrick what she's feeling. When I realized the connection between Patrick and someone close to Angie I pretty much rolled my eyes. Seriously. It didn't make a lot of sense and I don't know why it wasn't brought up in the first book at all.

We get some reappearances from other characters from the first book, Devin and Oscar and also Angie's ex-husband Phil. I really didn't give two craps about the latter character and his total 180 was just weird. There's forgiveness and than just setting yourself up for crap in the future. Once again this could have been fixed if we had gotten Angie's point of view. I hated characters discussing her instead of me as a reader getting to read about how she felt.

The character of Patrick's girlfriend actually gave him depth. I liked her and wish that we got more interaction between her and Patrick. I also wanted to shake Patrick because I still don't think that he got what he did was wrong regarding keeping her in the dark.

Reading about how Patrick and Angie's investigation tied into their former friend's death was great. I couldn't believe it when you get to how everything was connected. The flow in this one was pretty good. Though I have to say that once again Patrick running from scene to scene after a while made me laugh. When does he eat and sleep?

The ending was really good in this one and left a lot of questions open about what's next for Patrick and Angie. show less

I came across this series some ten years after the first one was published and was a bit miffed that I had missed out for so long. When I finally read it, I just loved the first one, A Drink Before The War. So after finishing Darkness, Take My Hand, am I still miffed? Heck, yeah. This one's better than the first.

Lehane's plot is wonderfully crisp. Nothing is wasted, no dead lulls here. The characters feel real, with all the flaws and delightfulness of real people. And Lehane's prose is just fantastic! I'm really looking forward now to the third in the series.

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 show more 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. show less