With a new son and the largest project in the history of my department at work, my time for reading has diminished of late. When I finally got back on the wagon I selected the follow on to my much-loved "A Drink Before the War"; Dennis Lehane's "Darkness Take My Hand"...
Kenzie and Gennaro are back as their witty, self-loathing, love-denying beautiful selves in this thriller that is far, far darker than its predecessor. There are more psychos than you can shake a straight jacket at and they are so sickly creepy that you can feel them crawling from the pages under your skin. The emotional stakes are raised in this book also, which combined with the villainous elements above led to a more tangible feeling of dread than I can remember encountering in a book in a long time.
The plot is fairly good, starting off quite straightforward and becoming massively more complex as it goes on. Many different strands, past and present are brought together into something far less inconspicuous than we are first led to believe. The best thing about the writing and the plot (and I am only projecting my own experiences onto the objectives of the writer) is that our own emotions are employed to betray and deceive. The solution to the mystery, though a little out of the blue, was fairly surprising.
All in all a very good way to get back into my reading (and writing) routine.
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