Gone, Baby, Gone

Dennis Lehane

Lehane clocks in with the fourth novel in the Kenzie and Gennaro series with his most intricate plot and satisfying novel so far. In this one, Kenzie and Gennaro are bullied into taking the case of a missing four- year-old by the girl's aunt. The mother seems not to care much about her child's whereabouts when she's not in front of the TV cameras, preferring to watch television and drink beer with her best friend and next door neighbor. What's already an atypical missing persons case gets weirder and weirder as Kenzie and Gennaro, working with a couple of Boston cops named Poole and Broussard, peel off layer after layer that links the case to organized crime, drug dealing, a two-hundred- thousand dollar heist, and imprisoned renegade mob boss Cheese Olamon, a schoolyard acquaintance of Kenzie's.

While the moralizing of A Drink Before the War is back (though far more subdued here) and Lehane seems to buy into the urban myth of the ever- present Child Molester on Every Corner, such concerns for the intent of the author tend to fall by the wayside when a mystery is so intricately plotted. Red herrings fly thick and fast, the case twists and turns with startling frequency, no one is in any way happy, and ghosts of old cases the two have worked return to haunt them with regularity as they bump heads over and over again with higher-ups in the Boston and state police departments. It is the skill with which the mystery is plotted, and Lehane's affable writing style, that keeps this book from falling into the one-trick-pony trap of a Jonathan Kellerman or an Andrew Vachss. Lehane finally made a solid name for himself with the success of Mystic River two years ago; here's to hoping fans of that novel will come back and discover the Kenzie and Gennaro novels, some of the best neo-noir writing there is to be had today.