Review: 'Moonlight Mile'

MOONLIGHT MILE
By Dennis Lehane
Crime Fiction
October 2010
William Morrow
ISBN: 978-0-06-183692-3

Patrick and Angie are back. Still driven, still trying to do the right thing, but with new commitments. And when the past comes calling, the future is in jeopardy.

Patrick is trying hard to toe the line. If he can keep his disdain for the unprincipled rich at bay, he just might get a permanent job with the type of investigative agency that destroys whistleblowers and protects criminals, if their parents are rather wealthy. He hates it, but his wife and baby girl deserve the basics -- a home, relying on a steady paycheck, health insurance. (The undercurrent of having to betray moral principles to get these basics is so well drawn by Lehane that he doesn't have to draw attention to Patrick's dilemma; it's there as an aspect of how the middle class and below try to survive these days.)

One dreary evening, Patrick is confronted by the aunt of Amanda McCready, the little girl who vanished in Lehane's brilliant Gone, Baby, Gone. The price of doing the right thing after they found Amanda and returned her was devastating years ago and preys on them still. Whether they did the right thing remains a point of sorrow and argument between them.

Review: 'Best American Noir of the Century'

THE BEST AMERICAN NOIR OF THE CENTURY Edited by James Ellroy and Otto Penzler
Crime fiction anthology
October 2010
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 978-0547330778

It's dark, it's going to end badly and there is probably a dangerous woman involved. Must be noir.

Otto Penzler, working with James Ellroy, has brought together stories to define this narrow niche of bleak crime literature with a new anthology. The Best American Noir of the Century has some of the usual suspects and some surprises (especially in its reliance on recent fiction, a successful reliance). Some of the endings are more O. Henry than James M. Cain, but nearly every story has something to recommend it being discovered by a new audience or rediscovered by a reader more steeped in noir. This is more than a collection of stories to dip into; this is a reference work for anyone interested in crime fiction to delve into often.


The collection begins with a classic that leaves no hope for sunshine. Tod Robbins's story Spur was the inspiration for the film Freaks, directed by Tod Browning of Dracula fame. The story of a little man with a big heart who loves the wrong woman is as creepy and eerie as any old European fairy tale, and is very different from the film. A truly inspired choice from 1923 for the opener.

In Progress: 'Best American Noir'

Not only should short stories not be read one after another after another, without pause for the effect of each one, but noir short stories definitely should be allowed to breathe on their own.

Take Dennis Lehane's entry in the upcoming Best American Noir of the Century (October 2010, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). Although Lehane is best known for his contemporary and historical novels of Boston, his 1999 story "Running Out of Dog" is set in the south. It's a post-Vietnam tale of three friends, Elgin, Blue and Jewel Lut, and how adulthood has not treated them well.