Moonlight Mile

Acclaimed New York Times bestselling author Dennis Lehane delivers an explosive tale of integrity and vengeance—heralding the long-awaited return of private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro

Amanda McCready was four years old when she vanished from a Boston neighborhood twelve years ago. Desperate pleas for help from the child's aunt led investigators Kenzie and Gennaro to take on the case. The pair risked everything to find the young girl—only to orchestrate her return to a neglectful mother and a broken home.

Now Amanda is sixteen—and gone again. A stellar student, brilliant but aloof, she seemed destined to escape her upbringing. Yet Amanda's aunt is once more knocking on Patrick Kenzie's door, fearing the worst for the little girl who has blossomed into a striking, clever young woman—a woman who hasn't been seen in weeks.

Haunted by their consciences, Kenzie and Gennaro revisit the case that troubled them the most. Their search leads them into a world of identity thieves, methamphetamine dealers, a mentally unstable crime boss and his equally demented wife, a priceless, thousand-year-old cross, and a happily homicidal Russian gangster. It's a world in which motives and allegiances constantly shift and mistakes are fatal.

In their desperate fight to confront the past and find Amanda McCready, Kenzie and Gennaro will be forced to question if it's possible to do the wrong thing and still be right or to do the right thing and still be wrong. As they face an evil that goes beyond broken families and broken dreams, they discover that the sins of yesterday don't always stay buried and the crimes of today could end their lives.

Amazon.com ReviewAmazon Best Books of the Month, November 2010: It’s tough going for a good man in a messed-up world, particularly in Dennis Lehane's Boston. Patrick Kenzie knows he did the right thing twelve years ago (during the events in Gone, Baby, Gone) when he located missing 4-year-old Amanda McCready and returned her to her neglectful mother, even though she would’ve been better off with her kidnappers. That doesn’t mean he’s had an easy time living with his decision. In Moonlight Mile, Patrick is still scraping by as a freelance PI, but now he’s married to his former partner Angie Gennaro and with a daughter of his own. When Patrick learns that once again Amanda McCready’s gone missing, his conscience gets the better of him and he's soon on the trail of the enigmatic 16-year-old, only to discover that the moral complexity of his work has not lessened with time. And neither has Lehane's talent as a top-notch crime writer. Much like a cup of Dunkin' Donuts coffee, Lehane never fails to satisfy and the latest Patrick and Angie story is no less addictive. --Shane Hansanuwat

From Publishers WeeklyAn old case takes on new dimensions in Lehane's sixth crime novel to feature Boston PIs Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro, last seen in 1999's Prayers for Rain. Twelve years earlier, in 1998's Gone, Baby, Gone, Patrick and Angie investigated the kidnapping of four-year-old Amanda McCready. The case drove a temporary wedge between the pair after Patrick returned Amanda to her mother's neglectful care. Now Patrick and Angie are married, the parents of four-year-old Gabriella, and barely making ends meet with Patrick's PI gigs while Angie finishes graduate school. But when Amanda's aunt comes to Patrick and tells him that Amanda, now a 16-year-old honor student, is once again missing, he vows to find the girl, even if it means confronting the consequences of choices he made that have haunted him for years. While Lehane addresses much of the moral ambiguity from Gone, this entry lacks some of the gritty rawness of the early Kenzie and Gennaro books. (Nov.) (c) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.