Mystic River

After Robert B. Parker, Lehane is the most successful and skilled descendant of Eddie Coyle (a debt he acknowledges in his introduction to a reissue of the Higgins book). While you can’t go wrong with any of the entries in his Kenzie/Gennaro detective series (or his later historically-based trilogy), this stand-alone novel about three childhood friends brought back together by a crime one of them may have committed is his most powerful work, as well as the novel that first spurred my interest in trying my hand at Boston-based crime fiction.

Beautifully written, I found this tragic story almost operatic in its intensity. A working-class girl in South Boston is murdered. Her violent ex-con father vows revenge. He focuses his suspicions on a former friend who was sexually molested as a boy and subsequently was shunned as damaged goods. Meanwhile another of the ex-con’s former boyhood friends, now a cop, races to solve the crime before the father takes justice into his own hands.

I always know I’m reading a thought-provoking book with a strong sense of place when I marvel at the descriptions and say to myself, “I want to do that too!” In fact, I didn’t even really become a crime fiction fan until I was well into adulthood. Although I’d always wanted to write novels, it wasn’t until reading Lehane’s deeply compelling characters paired with an intriguing plot and terrific descriptions of a Boston neighborhood that I thought I’d try my hand at crime fiction. Not only is Mystic River a page-turner, but it’s also an exploration of the capacity for… show more.