Okay, so my Dennis Lehane kick wasn’t so intense as I thought it was. Still I like his writing, and I will likely finish the rest of his Kenzie/Gennaro novels before the year is over.
Darkness, Take My Hand is the second book in that series. Here, Patrick Kenzie is lured into protecting the son of a psychiatrist. She’s received a threat against his life by someone claiming to be Moira Kenzie and blaming two local mafioso. Kenzie (Patrick, that is) determines quickly that Moira Kenzie faked the name and that the mafioso weren’t behind it. In fact, no one seems to be behind it. So after a few weeks of tailing the son, Kenzie and Gennaro quit and move on to other cases.
Kara Rider, a few years younger than Kenzie is found murdered. Crucified in fact. And Kenzie is drawn in to the case. Soon, the son of the psychiatrist is really found dead, by the same killer. More and more people are threatened and killed. There’s a serial killer on the loose. Two in fact, working in tandem, and they have something against the crew Kenzie ran with as a teen, picking off them or their children.
So, I didn’t like this one as much as the other Kenzie/Gennaro novels I’ve already read. The plot in this one is just too convoluted. I don’t have a problem with a psychopath targeting people he feels have done him wrong. This was just too elaborate to work though. And the police took far too long to piece together the connections. Oh sure, everyone held back secrets and that’s what kept them from figuring it out. And there’s a little too much cowboying that goes wrong too. These folks should know better than to do things without backup, licit or illicit. Yet at key points they keep running off on their own, giving the bad guys the opportunity to mess with them. And why they keep messing with them instead of just exacting revenge I don’t know. They are supposedly smart and yet they do some obviously stupid things like leave messages and then hang around to see what happens when the messages are received. Bleah.
Still, it’s a good page-turner. I can overlook the flaws because none of them were so bad as to make me groan.
Title: Darkness, take my hand
Author: Dennis Lehane
Imprint/Publisher: HarperTorch / HarperCollinsPublishers
Publication date: 1996
Format: Mass market paperback
Length: 355 p.
ISBN-10: 0-380-72628-9
Subject: Kenzie, Patrick (Fictitious character) — Fiction
Subject: Gennaro, Angela (Fictitious character) — Fiction
Subject: Private investigators — Massachusetts — Boston — Fiction
Subject: Boston (Mass.) — Fiction
LC Classification: PS3562.E426 D37 1996
