A Kenzie and Gennaro Novel (Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro Series)

Once again I have neglected reponsibilities to read a Dennis Lehane mystery. Every one of his books takes you right in to the action with him, Angela Gennaro, and Bubba Rogowski. " Prayers for Rain" continues the tradition of excellent phrasing and insightful observation of life as a private investigator in Boston. This is a book for all of you who enjoy great characterization and a believable story. I look forward to the next one from Dennis Lehane.

The only thing I can say about Dennis Lehane is: "When's the next one going to print?" For myself, I thought 'Prayers' dialogue was a bit snappier, more colorful, than the others but that's me. One of the many things I enjoy about Lehane's writing is that he puts as much effort into the last ten pages as he did the first ten. In detective and mystery stories, that's rare indeed.

Just outstanding--his best yet and I loved all of his others. I find it amazing that Lehane can write of blood and guts and yet define such likeable characters--my heart even went out to Bubba, the killing machine, in this one. A great plot with the best kind of ending--a surprise.

This book continues the story of the Coughlin family that we were introduced to in The Given Day and is every bit as enthralling as the first book . Here we are introduced to a growing up Joseph , a renegade and like his brother Danny a man who does things his way . Its brings us in to contact with early Mafia leaders who Joe crosses paths with and to say any more would destroy the story for other readers . A jem from beginning to end . ( apologies , this review was intended for LIVE BY NIGHT and not Prayers for Rain )

Not the best book by Dennis Lehane - not even close - but still, it kept me reading. It is a bit too hard to follow the plot and a bit too gratuitously violent for my taste. If it were the first of Lehane's that I'd read, I would have missed the pleasures of the other Kenzie and Gennero novels, and the huge appreciation I have for Mystic River. And the author even when he isn't masterful is pretty damned good.

I absolutely love Dennis Lehane's writings. I lived for years in Boston and it is the perfect setting for Lehane's suspenseful, dark stories. All of the Kenzie and Gennaro stories are excellent, and I'm now reading "The Given Day," which is fascinating. I really don't think you can go wrong with a Lehane novel, but they are strictly for adults.

very formulaic. read one you,ve read them all. sloppy writing, e.g. has one character as an army brat who followed his father to a large number of stations including north korea. huh?? uses a disguise for one charcter identical to one used by mankell and chesterton before him. substitutes violence, sadism and sex for creativity.

A convoluted plot made difficult by the introduction of too many underdeveloped characters. This novel disappoints when measured against his better works, e.g., Shutter Island and Mystic River. It is hard to believe this was written by the same author. I do NOT recommend.

This is an excellent series. I finished one and picked up the next one and you should read them in order. I was so sorry they retired from the PI business and I won't know what became of them. I have been to Boston lately and that made the stories even better. I love the characters even Bubba. The 3 of them could sure get into some kind of trouble w/o even trying!! Dennis Lehane characters and their stories are always books you can't put down!!

However, I you are the kind of reader that likes, even requires, a plot to make sense, then save this book for winter and use it to start a fire. This not a smart book nor even a good book. Even on a beach it will waste your time and aggravate you.

This review will be generic and pretty much apply to all of the Kenzie-Gennero Books. I got sucked into these by the excellent opening scenes of Moonlight Mile. I stopped reading reading then when I realized this was book 5 in a series. It took 4 books to realize that what I read was a fluke and not indicative of his writing at all.

Call me a "Plausible" like Alfred Hitchcock, but I am willing to suspend disbelief within the context of the worlds an author creates. But you can't create a hyper-realistic hard boiled Boston and then populate with Jedi Knights and Dresden fantasy like Beauties without me breaking into raucous laughter.

Add to this that anyone who is "genre wise" will recognize the same twists and tricks used in the classics. If you have read Chandler or even seen a few movies, there is nothing new here for you.

The characters are cardboard and ridiculous and the plots are all contrived to the point of absurdity ( unlike Chandler and Hammett) . Each "clever" twist is so transparent as to make the hero seem stupid by the time they "figure it out". Because you, the reader saw it coming 100 pages ago and you aren't the detective. Though I guess the appeal could be these books make a reader feel smarter then they are, but the reality is the characters are just plain dumb.

Lehane has some talent in writing grit, though too often he just focuses on the terrible details and hasn't the talent to infer the horrible and tragic without being explicit. So he is going to gross many people out with unnecessary gore.

Lehane has a decent handle of the noir tone, but as I said before, he populations this tone with YA like fantasy characters instead of real people. It's as if he took the plot ( use this term loosely) of a Jack Reacher book and tried to paint it over with a Dashiell Hammett brush. The result is just silly.

Kenzie-Gennaro is fodder for the masses. There are many great mysteries and thrillers that are meticulously well plotted and make internal sense. These Lehane books are not them.

A side note. All of these books are very emotionally unsatisfying. No sense of closure or justice at all. I get the author is go fro "realism" and that real life is messy. But there is no place for realism in these books, and it just adds to the reader's sense of frustration when you get no satisfying conclusion.

The protagonist, Patrick Kenzie is a despicable man who makes despicable decisions leading to despicable actions which he self justifies using juvenile rationalization. He is an unlikable self serving narcissist so when he gets in a bind between doing what's right and doing what he must, you really don't care. For the reader who is hoping he will die, it is no dilemma at all. He is a main character who has not made a single self sacrificial move in 5 books, and doesn't even feel to have any sense of agency about him at all. A mindless self serving automaton who's mere presence means death and ruin to all those around him. It's not safe to be his friend, his employer, or to even know the guy. How can you enjoy books about a PI who NEVER helps, and usually kills anyone who retain him?

I am baffled at the success of these books. But then again, just look around and see what passes for good storytelling.

Patrick Kenzie is back.. without Angela Gennaro as the tale begins... with his faithful psychopathic companion Ruprecht "Bubba" Rogowski on a basic seek-and-dissuade job for a sweet young thing who is being mercilessly stalked and harassed by a well-to-do yuppie who gets off on this type of bad behavior. With that satisfyingly addressed early on, things get darker by the chapter as the stalking victim turns up dead, inexplicably but inarguably by her own hand, and it becomes Patrick's self-imposed obligation to find out what drove the young woman to such a desperate point in a life that had quickly turned to crap.
Darkness pervades the narrative in the form of sadism both physical and psychological, as Patrick and Bubba, rejoined by Angela, battle a masterful psych-ops practitioner with an uncanny ability to stay several steps ahead of our intrepid trio at every stage of the game, as much chess as cat-and-mouse.
The key elements for the reader are the reuniting of the partners/lovers Angela and Patrick after a separation that had always seemed unnecessary, and a significant fleshing out of Bubba's history as he plays a much larger role throughout the story, considerably greater than his usual "Can I do violence now, Patrick? Can I, huh? Can I?" characterization.
What I didn't much care for was Lehane's "aftershock" device (again) that this time around felt artificial and unwarranted... Lehane is a terrific writer, but Raymond Chandler he is not!
Looking forward to the next book with great anticipation.

Dennis Lehane is a prolific and talented author of prose fiction dealing with crime, criminals, victims, and those trying to set things straight. The quality of his novels ranges from really good, as in Live by Night, to one-of-the-best-ever, as in The Drop. Prayers for Rain is comfortably situated somewhere between the two, roughly comparable to Gone, Baby, Gone.

When I first started reading Lehane, I characterized his work as noir or neo-noir. It has the gritty, street-wise appeal of books written by noir pioneers from the '30's and '40's such as still-read authors like Dashell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and James M. Cain. The noir characterization usually fit pretty well, subsuming harsh qualities and themes including official corruption, personal betrayal, gratuitous cruelty, and deep-seated cynicism that was readily understandable as a product of badly flawed characters and the ugly contexts in which they lived. The protagonists were suitably imperfect and a bit jaded, but they were basically decent and valued decency, on the odd chance they found it in others.

In the case of Prayers for Rain, however, I'm not sure that the noir characterization fits. In fact, that may be true for all the books in Lehane's Kensey and Gennaro series. The main characters, Patrick Kensey and Angie Gennaro, are just too engaging and have too much fun. Furthermore, while there's nothing sloppily sentimental about it, they really love each other. Gennaro, especially, can be acerbic and hard-edged, but it's part of her playfulness, a bit brassy but clever and innocuous. Just part of her fundamentally good-hearted personality.

This odd couple of sometimes mis-matched private detectives and lovers, moreover, is especially adept at making interesting friends. None are headed for sainthood, but they're the kind of folks you can count on, they've got your back, and are as resourceful as difficult circumstances demand. In Prayers for Rain, Bubba Rogowski is exactly the kind of pal that Kensey and Gennaro need: tough as nails, well-connected with the mob, violent, and about ten times as smart and skillful as he usually seems. Bubba is exactly the sort we would expect to find in a noir atmosphere if he weren't such a true-blue, take-a-bullet-for-a-friend sort of guy.

Great fun, true love, faithful comradeship, AND they all love dogs -- this is not the stuff of noir! Still, there's enough nastiness, violence, back-stabbing, and double-dealing that Prayers for Rain comes close. So I'll equivocate a bit and call it semi-noir. However we label it, Lehane's novel is quite good.

It's also long, well over three hundred pages, more than a hundred pages longer than The Drop. In the case of Prayers for Rain, however, the extra length is all to the good. The story is heavy-laden with interesting characters who interact in fascinating, sometimes hard-to-fathom ways, and the added pages assure that the characters are given the attention needed to enable us to understand them and their reasons for being there. Motel owners Warren and Holly Martens are two of the most unexpected and charming minor characters readers will ever encounter. Psychiatrist Diane Bourne is one of the most sinister. And attorney Vanessa Moore is one of the sexiest. Lehane's novel is full-to-the-brim with interesting people, and though they make his book long and not particularly stream-lined, they add substantially to its interest.

Prayers for Rain is also quite complex. So much happens that seems so unlikely that readers may judge it to be unrealistic, and it probably is. However, Lehane is sufficiently skillful to prevent his story from becoming inaccessibly confusing, and he eventually manages to pull it all together into a coherent whole. There are no dead zones or pointless sections that try the reader's patience, one of the difficulties with the second half of Live by Night. Something eventful and pertinent is always happening, which may explain why the book is so long and complex. Yes, long and complex but always readable and never boring.

Early in the novel we also get to see what Kensey can do on his own, during a six month period when the couple has split. He does well enough, but the book is a lot more interesting when the Kensey and Gennaro, haltingly at first, get back together. Their animated effort to get more information out of Dr. Bourne is hilarious. She sees through it, but given the circumstances, a performance as effectively choreographed as theirs has to be unnerving.

While there is plenty of fun and a big bundle of surprises in Prayers for Rain, there is also a good deal of compelling sadness, and a villain who is impossible not to hate. Prayers for Rain has, by my count, three important substantive outcomes. But however it ends, a novel fraught with more kinds of pain than a normal reader can imagine, will inevitably leave scars, as well as wounds that never heal. Noir, neo-noir, semi-noir, whatever the literary characterization, this is a very good novel, probably the best of Lehane's early work, and I enjoyed reading it.