Mystic River, by Dennis Lehane

Mystic River is a good mystery, and a terrific novel. Its characters and setting are irresistible. Lehane's skill is awesome; he manages to write exactly what I want to read: a novel that creates a world that draws me in, a world that I am loath to leave behind when I read the last page and put the book down.

We are introduced to the three main characters in their childhood. Sean Devine, Jimmy Marcus, and Dave Boyle are pre-teens living in what is probably a part of Greater Boston which Lehane calls Buckingham. There is an incident, Dave is kidnapped by two men, but he escapes several days later and is returned to the neighborhood.

Many years and events later, the three are brought together by tragedy. Sean has become a State Trooper. Jimmy is an ex-con who owns a store, and Dave has a nondescript job about which we hear little. As the action begins, explodes, and the investigation and mystery progress, we learn more and more about these three men, their families, and their past and present lives. They become more and more real, more three-dimensional.

The mystery itself is a good one. I can brag that I figured it out at about the 70% point, but that didn't spoil it for me, as I couldn't really be sure. And the mystery, while it's every bit true to the form and strong enough to stand alone, is not all there is to this book. We are every bit as involved in the nature and lives of these men, and how they will each deal with what life has dealt them.

While I enjoyed Moonlight Mile quite a bit, I think that Mystic River better reveals the talent of this powerful writer.

A Publisher's Weekly review of the book

The Mystic River entry in Wikipedia (about the river, not the book -- but see the "disambiguation page" for more)

IMDb entry for the movie made of Mystic River

A New York Times review of the movie

A New York Times Sunday Book Review interview with Dennis Lehane

Moonlight Mile, by Dennis Lehane

Robert B. Parker has left us, and, by implication, so has Spenser; but Dennis Lehane has given us a new Bostonian. Patrick Kenzie is not Spenser, Angela Gennaro is not Susan, and Bubba is not Hawk, but there are parallels. The differences are somehow endearing, though, and more interesting.

Kenzie doesn't like guns, and if I'm not mistaken doesn't fire one in this entire novel. He is more likely to be hurt than to hurt anyone. We are not told that Angela is beautiful or perfect, but that Patrick and Angela are very much in love, with each other, and with their four-year-old, Gabby. Bubba is probably the closest to his Parker shadow, a more or less omnipotent force or trump card with fierce and uncompromising loyalty to his friends.

We are brought into a complicated story that involves incompetent parenting, kidnapping, teenage pregnancy, mobsters from the former Soviet Union, and a bit of priceless jewelry from the history of Kiev.

It's a masterfully done piece of detective fiction. I look forward to reading another one soon. Lehane's Mystic River was made into a movie starring Sean Penn and others.

Lehane's latest book is Live By Night.

Interpreter of Maladies, by Jhumpa Lahiri

198 pages. Published by Mariner Books, Houghton Mifflin Co. New York 1999.

In keeping with my habit of seldom reading "new" stuff, here's a book from the free table at work that's eight or nine years old, and I only regret that I didn't find this writer sooner. These stories are all excellent, perfect, what can I say? Find a copy and read it.

Each one of these stories deals with people living or visiting somewhere other than their home. Many are Indian or Pakistani living in the United States of America, others are moved from their home by the partition of the Indian subcontinent.

"A Temporary Matter" is the story of Shoba and Shukumar, a Bengali couple living in Boston. They are notified that their electric power will be interrupted for an hour on the next five evenings at eight PM. These interruptions provide an unlikely respite from ordinary life, an opportunity for them to take stock. The result is bittersweet, complicated.

"When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine" is told from the perspective of a young Indian girl living in the USA with her parents in 1971. Mr Pirzada is a neighbor who has left his wife and seven daughters in Dacca, Pakistan, where civil war is raging.

"Interpreter of Maladies" finds a family of first generation Indian-Americans and their children, returning to India on vacation.

"A Real Durwan" is about Boori Ma, a woman displaced to Calcutta by Partition.

"Sexy" tells about an affair between Miranda, an American, and Dev, a Bengali, in New York. This is set against a story told to her by her Indian friend Laxmi, whose cousin's husband has deserted her for a Canadian woman. As a favor to her friend, Miranda watches the cousin's seven-year-old son for a day, which puts her relationship with Dev in a new perspective.

"Mrs. Sen's" is where another young boy, Eliot, goes during the day while his parents work. Mrs. Sen's husband is a mathematics professor. She is adrift in America, unable to drive a car, used to having a "driver" at "home."

"This Blessed House," the Connecticut home of newlywed Hindus is packed full of Christian knicknacks, courtesy of the former residents. Raking leaves, they uncover a large shrine to the Virgin Mary in the yard.

"The Treatment of Bibi Haldar." Bibi Haldar has a disease that sounds like epilepsy, but is not understood. She lives at the mercy of relatives, who tolerate her but before long find her to be too much to handle. Many treatments have been attempted for Bibi, but in the end, she finds her own remedy.

"The Third and Final Continent" is North America. The young man has lived in India, and England, and now Cambridge, Massachusetts. For six weeks he awaits the arrival of his wife, Mala, from Calcutta. During this time he rents a room from a remarkable old lady who opines that the planting of an American flag on the moon is "splendid!"

I have not done justice to these wonderful stories in my brief descriptions. Please don't be put off by my vain attempt to summarize them, but dive in and read them all. The worst thing about this book is the temptation to simply read it all at once, without stopping. It is a feast of reading, and worth savoring.

I look forward very much to my next opportunity to read Jhumpa Lahiri.

A Google search for "Jhumpa Lahiri" is rewarding.

Blue Screen, by Robert B. Parker

A Sunny Randall novel, in which Jesse Stone plays a major part.

If I seem to be on a Parker kick, I am. I borrowed 2 Spenser movies from the library and watched them last week. Not so hot, but interesting. Robert Urich just isn't Spenser to me. And they were "TV" grade movies, which is to say bad.

They were Pale Kings and Princes, and Ceremony. I am even less qualified as a movie reviewer than a book critic. My take: I'm glad I didn't pay money to see these, but I did watch both of them through to the end.

Sunny Randall is a female detective living in Boston, Massachusetts. Yes, she and Spenser live in the same city. Sunny's shrink is Susan Silverman. And in this novel she meets, works with, and sleeps with Jesse Stone. Lots of interaction.

On Parker's website there is a quote from The Robert B. Parker Companion, by Dean James and Elizabeth Foxwell, which states that Parker invented Sunny Randall at the request of Helen Hunt, so there would be a Parker detective that she could portray.

In this book, Sunny is hired by a sleazy movie promoter to protect his primary actress/property, a woman named Erin Flint. It isn't long before there's a murder, lots of mystery, a few trips across the country, some sex, the meeting with Jesse Stone, etc.

It's a fast read, entertaining, nothing wrong with it. Very lightweight.

Apparently "Blue Screen" refers to a type of movie rather than the failure of a Windows computer.

I prefer Spenser, in book form, so far.

Back Story, by Robert B. Parker

G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York. 2003. 291 pages



This is a Spenser novel, one of the series of thirty or more, featuring characters well-known to those of us who have read so many of these. Hawk, Susan Silverman, Quirk, Spenser, and yet another Pearl (I don't know what happened to Pearl I, in a novel I didn't read), the dog.

Spenser is a private detective living in Boston. Susan is his love, a respected psychiatrist. Hawk is a "criminal genius," a former covert operative of vague and mysterious roots, an African-American keenly aware of the tension between races in our society who will be reading impenetrable scientific literature in one scene, only to respond with the worst shuck-and-jive language ("sho nuf") in the next.


Spenser is nothing less than a Samurai. He is strong, brave, skilled at warfare beyond belief, and possessed of a powerful sense of right and wrong. People come to him who have been wronged, treated unfairly, by powers that they are too weak to overcome, and Spenser sets out to correct the injustice.

In this novel Spenser is approached by a young woman, Daryl, through the intercession of his adopted son Paul Giacomin. Daryl's mother was killed in a bank robbery in Boston in 1974; this story is placed somewhere in more current times, probably at the beginning of the twenty-first century. (My, it's strange to write that.) It was never discovered who exactly shot her mother to death, there is a cloud of mystery and a hint of cover-up over the crime. This is essential Spenser. He goes to work.

Through the story he unravels the facts of the case, not without risking his life and those of his friends, and killing several of the enemy who try to keep him from the truth. He uncovers a complicated intrigue involving organized crime and the FBI, which I will not explain out of a desire not to spoil the mystery for those who have not yet read this delicious book.

There is a strange and bittersweet ending, a sort of shifting of resolution that I found interesting, even realistic. But make no mistake, this is rich fantasy, pure escape fiction: There are no Spensers walking the face of this planet. No woman is as beautiful or tolerant as Silverman, no friend as powerful, connected and brave as Hawk. No cops (including the FBI) so impotent and frustrated, or at worst corrupt and evil, connected to the mob or mired in cover-ups of their own mistakes. There will be no resolution of this puzzle without Spenser's intervention.

At the end of the battle the Samurai sheaths his sword. The field is littered with dead bodies. The world is still evil, but he has inserted some balance, neutralized some threats. He has done what he set out to do, but we are not sure if Daryl will know the details of who killed her mother. She has, according to the formula, opted out, told Spenser to stop looking, she doesn't want to know any more. But Spenser did not stop once he had begun; he leaves no job unfinished.


This is escape fiction at its best, with a few thought-provoking threads woven through it. Parker has something to say about the hippies and the anti-establishment movement in the seventies, the dope-smoking culture, and the modern hangers-on who live in this past, rolling joints and cursing the Man. Over-simplified it may be, but he makes his case: if you want to change the world, you'd better be ready to get hurt and hurt some others, you'd better have a good plan and the means to execute it. Self-reliance is what Spenser is about: he knows exactly whom he can trust.

Parker is also interested in the discomfort we feel when we are inescapably faced with racial issues. He contrasts Spenser's invulnerable bond with the equally invulnerable Hawk, and their superiority to prejudicial thinking expressed through their black-and-white ribbing, their comedic take on the whole "what color am I" issue, with the stark hatred and rejection between whites and blacks that drives essential elements of this plot.

It is also important to mention that in this novel Spenser meets Jesse Stone, the police chief of Paradise, Massachusetts. Stone is the star of another excellent series by Parker, which has had some success adapted for television -- as did the Spenser series in the past.

If you haven't had the pleasure of reading Robert B. Parker, wait no longer. There is a pile of great reading here, you can't go wrong.

Some other than official Robert B. Parker Web Sites:

Bullets and Beer
A Parker Biography on Kirjasto (Pegasos, at www.kirjasto.sci.fi.)
A Parker Article at bookreporter.com
New York Times Article
Wikipedia Entry (includes more links)