Now Playing: Dennis Lehane's Gone, Baby, Gone

I love to discover an older series of books. This means that I can check them all out, set them on my nightstand, and enjoy them all in one reading frenzy. No waiting years for the next one to be published. Six years ago I picked up Dennis Lehane’s incredible Mystic River, and was pleasantly surprised to learn that he had an entire crime fiction series for me to devour. And that’s just what I did.

For those who have yet to read his Patrick Kenzie/Angela Gennaro detective series set in Boston, please add these books to your reading list. Kenzie and Gennaro are on-again, off-again lovers who work together as private eyes. They have friends on both sides of the law, and they don’t discriminate when it comes to needing help solving a case. And morally, they’re not above using childhood pal Bubba Rogowski’s persuasive service of breaking kneecaps, if that’s what it takes.

Gone, Baby, Gone is the most powerful book in the series. Dealing with missing children, guardianship, and pedophilia, it’s a disturbing book but the whizbang of an ending is worth the price of the painful subject matter.

Dennis Lehane's books:

Kenzie/Gennaro series
A Drink Before the War (1994)
Darkness, Take My Hand (1996)
Sacred (1997)
Gone, Baby, Gone (1998)
Prayers for Rain (1999)

Mystic River (2001) - 2003 movie that won Sean Penn and Tim Robbins Academy Awards
Shutter Island (2003) - Possible future Scorcese/DiCaprio collaboration
Coronado: Stories (2006)

Find out more about Dennis Lehane through our Biography Resource Center (library card is required)

Gone, Baby, Gone, directed by Ben Affleck and starring his brother, Casey, Morgan Freeman, and Ed Harris.