Cheese Olamon, "a six-foot-two, four-hundred-and-thirty-pound yellow-haired Scandinavian who'd somehow arrived at the misconception he was black," is telling his old grammar school friends Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro why they have to convince another mutual chum, the gun dealer Bubba Rugowski, that Cheese didn't try to have him killed. "You let Bubba know I'm clean when it comes to what happened to him. You want me alive. Okay? Without me, that girl will be gone. Gone-gone. You understand? Gone, baby, gone." Of all the chilling, completely credible scenes of sadness, destruction, and betrayal in Dennis Lehane's fourth and very possibly best book about Kenzie and Gennaro, this moment stands out because it captures in a few pages the essence of Lehane's success.

Private detectives Kenzie and Gennaro, who live in the same working-class Dorchester neighborhood of Boston where they grew up, have gone to visit drug dealer Cheese in prison because they think he's involved in the kidnapping of 4-year-old Amanda McCready. Without sentimentalizing the grotesque figure of Cheese, Lehane tells us enough about his past to make us understand why he and the two detectives might share enough trust to possibly save a child's life when all the best efforts of traditional law enforcement have failed. By putting Kenzie and Gennaro just to one side of the law (but not totally outside; they have several cop friends, a very important part of the story), Lehane adds depth and edge to traditional genre relationships. The lifelong love affair between Kenzie and Gennaro--interrupted by her marriage to his best friend--is another perfectly controlled element that grows and changes as we watch. Surrounded by dead, abused, and missing children, Kenzie mourns and rages while Gennaro longs for one of her own. So the choices made by both of them in the final pages of this absolutely gripping story have the inevitability of life and the dazzling beauty of art.

Other Kenzie/Gennaro books available in paperback: Darkness, Take My Hand, A Drink Before the War, Sacred. --Dick Adler


From Publishers Weekly
Vanished, in this complex and unsettling fourth case for PIs Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro (after Sacred, 1997) is four-year-old Amanda McCready, taken one night from her apartment in Dorchester, a working-class section of Boston, where her mother had left her alone. Kenzie and Gennaro, hired by the child's aunt and uncle, join in an unlikely alliance with Remy Broussard and Nick Raftopoulos, known as Poole, the two cops with the department's Crimes Against Children squad who are assigned to the case. In tracing the history of Amanda's neglectful mother, whose past involved her with a drug lord and his minions, the foursome quickly find themselves tangling with Boston's crime underworld and involved in what appears to be a coup among criminals. Lehane develops plenty of tension between various pairs of parties: the good guys looking for Amanda and the bad guys who may know where she is; the two PIs and the two cops; various police and federal agencies; opposing camps in the underworld; and Patrick and Angie, who are lovers as well as business partners. All is delivered with abundant violence?e.g., bloated and mutilated corpses; gangland executions; shoot-outs with weapons of prodigious firepower; descriptions of sexual abuse of small children; threats of rape and murder?that serves to make Amanda's likely fate all the more chilling. Lehane tackles corruption in many forms as he brings his complicated plot to its satisfying resolution, at the same time leaving readers to ponder moral questions about social and individual responsibility long after the last page is turned. Author tour. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Four-year-old Amanda McCready has disappeared without a trace, and after several days, the police have no leads. Boston PIs Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro reluctantly take the case, knowing that the odds are that Amanda is already dead. Their investigation is complicated by Amanda's mother, Helene, who seems more interested in drinking at the local bar than in finding her daughter. After a second child disappears, Kenzie and Gennaro are drawn into a dark nexus of pedophiles, drug dealers, and a shady police unit with a hidden agenda. Ultimately, the detectives must make a decision that could destroy both their personal and professional relationship. Lehane, a Shamus Award winner for A Drink Before the War (LJ 11/1/94), has written a tense, edge-of-your-seat story about a world that is astoundingly cruel and unbearably violent to its most innocent members. This fourth Kenzie-Gennaro pairing will appeal to readers who like their mysteries coated with a heavy dose of realism and their endings left untidied. Recommended for all public libraries.-?Karen Anderson, Arizona State Univ. West Lib., PhoenixCopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The Wall street Journal
"Compelling. . .just the way we like it. . .When it comes to describing the action, Mr. Lehane delivers big time."


The Boston Globe, Michael Prager
...delightful reading ... Lehane is adept not only at describing situations but at creating them.


From AudioFile
In this murky tale of kidnapping, Robert Lawrence gives the gruff-voiced, edgy performance of Private Investigator Patrick Kenzie that listeners might expect. The suspects are colorful, but some of the female characters fall short (such as the drug-abusing mother of a missing child), with Lawrence relying too much on breathiness or whiny tones. Luckily, Patrick's partner and lover, Angela Gennaro, is presented much more realistically, without much stylization. The text is exciting overall, making this audiobook one for mystery fans to thoroughly enjoy. R.A.P. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
Lehane's fourth Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro mystery will further enhance the author's growing reputation. Kenzie and Gennaro reluctantly agree to search for Amanda McCready, who has been missing for more than a year, thus dramatically reducing the chances of finding her alive. The maverick PI duo immediately smells trouble, both from the child's druggie mother and from the uncooperative Boston police, who aren't eager to be shown up. The case quickly proves every bit as horrifying as Kenzie and Gennaro expected: parental neglect, police corruption, and a drug deal gone bad have combined to make one innocent five-year-old the pawn in a high-stakes power struggle. Lehane combines the intensity of Andrew Vachss, who also writes unflinchingly about child-abuse and abandonment cases, with the charismatic appeal of his protagonists, a working-class Nick and Nora who walk the meanest of streets. The wrenching portrait of a bent cop whose instincts are admirable but whose actions are appalling only adds to the emotional impact of this grim, utterly unsentimental blue-collar tragedy. Bill Ott


Publishers Weekly
"Lehane tackles corruption in many forms as he brings his complicated plot to its satisfying resolution..."


James Patterson
"Gone, Baby Gone is a tough, true powerful story written by a stunningly good novelist, one of our very best."


People, Pam Lambert
...[a] chilling, masterfully plotted tale...


Chicago Tribune
"To the list that includes such names as Robert B. Parker and Linda Barnes, add that of Dennis Lehane."


James Patterson
" Gone, Baby, Gone is a tough, true, powerful story written by a stunningly good novelist, one of our very best."


Book Description

The tough neighborhood of Dorchester is no place for the innocent or the weak. A territory defined by hard heads and even harder luck, its streets are littered with the detritus of broken families, hearts, dreams. Now, one of its youngest is missing. Private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro don't want the case. But after pleas from the child's aunt, they open an investigation that will ultimately risk everything -- their relationship, their sanity, and even their lives -- to find a little girl-lost.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Boston private detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro are hired to find four-year-old Amanda McCready, abducted from her bed on a warm, summer night. They meet her stoned-out, strangely apathetic mother, her loving aunt and uncle, the mother's dangerous, drug-addled friends, and two cops who've found so many abused or dead children they may be too far over the edge to come back.

Despite enormous public attention, rabid news coverage, and dogged police work, the investigation repeatedly hits a brick wall. Led into a world of drug dealers, child molesters, and merciless executioners, Patrick and Angie are soon forced to face not only the horrors adults can perpetrate on innocents but also their own conflicted feelings about what is best, and worst, when it comes to raising children. And as the Indian summer fades and the autumn chill deepens, Amanda McCready stays gone, banished so completely that she seems never to have existed.

Then another child disappears. . . .

Dennis Lehane takes you into a world of triple crosses, elaborate lies, and shrouded motives, where the villains may be more moral than the victims, the missing should possibly stay missing, and those who go looking for them may not come back alive.

Settle in and turn off the phone. From its haunting opening to its shocking climax, Gone, Baby, Gone is certain to be one of the most thrilling, talked-about suspense novels you read this year.

Dennis Lehane is the author of Sacred; Darkness, Take My Hand, and A Drink Before the War which won the Shamus Award for Best First Novel presented by the Private Eye Writers of America, and was also a Boston Globe best-seller. Lehane was born and raised in Dorchester, Massachusetts, and still lives in the Boston area. He holds an M.F.A. in creative writing.

SYNOPSIS

The neighborhood is no place for the innocent, the young, the defenseless or the pure. This is a territory of broken families, bitter cops, whacked out ex-cons, and a mother who watches herself on the nightly news as her missing child floats further and further into the unkown. Boston private investigators, Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro, don't want this case. But after pleas from the child's aunt, they embark upon an investigation and ultimately risk losing everything- their relationship, their sanity, and even their lives-to find this little-girl-lost.

Capturing the voices that echo within blue collar Boston, Dennis Lehane is a master storyteller, who weaves together embittered people, tattered emotions, and brutal crime to create relentless, heart-pounding novels of suspense. Gritty and evocative, the novels of Dennis Lehane are ones you will never forget.

FROM THE CRITICS

James Patterson

Gone, Baby Gone is a tough, true powerful story written by a stunningly good novelist, one of our very best.

Publishers Weekly

Vanished, in this complex and unsettling fourth case for PIs Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro (after Sacred, 1997) is four-year-old Amanda McCready, taken one night from her apartment in Dorchester, a working-class section of Boston, where her mother had left her alone. Kenzie and Gennaro, hired by the child's aunt and uncle, join in an unlikely alliance with Remy Broussard and Nick Raftopoulos, known as Poole, the two cops with the department's Crimes Against Children squad who are assigned to the case. In tracing the history of Amanda's neglectful mother, whose past involved her with a drug lord and his minions, the foursome quickly find themselves tangling with Boston's crime underworld and involved in what appears to be a coup among criminals. Lehane develops plenty of tension between various pairs of parties: the good guys looking for Amanda and the bad guys who may know where she is; the two PIs and the two cops; various police and federal agencies; opposing camps in the underworld; and Patrick and Angie, who are lovers as well as business partners. All is delivered with abundant violence--e.g., bloated and mutilated corpses; gangland executions; shoot-outs with weapons of prodigious firepower; descriptions of sexual abuse of small children; threats of rape and murder--that serves to make Amanda's likely fate all the more chilling. Lehane tackles corruption in many forms as he brings his complicated plot to its satisfying resolution, at the same time leaving readers to ponder moral questions about social and individual responsibility long after the last page is turned.

Library Journal

Four-year-old Amanda McCready has disappeared without a trace, and after several days, the police have no leads. Boston PIs Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro reluctantly take the case, knowing that the odds are that Amanda is already dead. Their investigation is complicated by Amanda's mother, Helene, who seems more interested in drinking at the local bar than in finding her daughter. After a second child disappears, Kenzie and Gennaro are drawn into a dark nexus of pedophiles, drug dealers, and a shady police unit with a hidden agenda. Ultimately, the detectives must make a decision that could destroy both their personal and professional relationship. Lehane, a Shamus Award winner for A Drink Before the War (LJ 11/1/94), has written a tense, edge-of-your-seat story about a world that is astoundingly cruel and unbearably violent to its most innocent members. This fourth Kenzie-Gennaro pairing will appeal to readers who like their mysteries coated with a heavy dose of realism and their endings left untidied. Recommended for all public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 4/15/98.]--Karen Anderson, Arizona State Univ. West Lib., Phoenix

Library Journal

Shamus Award winner Lehane is on a roll: President Clinton picked his last book, Sacred (LJ 6/15/87), for vacation reading, and he has just directed his first film. Here, Boston PIs Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro hunt for a little girl who disappeared a year before they were hired.

AudioFile - Joseph P. Menta