Until the Next Novel
When Dennis Lehane published his first novel, "A Drink Before the War," he was immediately recognized as one of the great young talents that blessed the mystery genre. That was in 1994; he was 29 years old.
That memorable debut featured a pair of Boston private investigators, Angela Gennaro and Patrick Kenzie, who quickly became ensconced in the hearts of readers. Both of them were funny, smart, sensitive — business partners who seemed fated to share a private life, too.
After five adventures together, Mr. Lehane abandoned them to write what was surely the best novel of 2001, "Mystic River." The awards committee for the Mystery Writers of America that year has a lot to answer for, as it didn't even garner a nomination. It did, however, go on to be bought for the movies by Clint Eastwood, who made it into a dark masterpiece that received numerous Academy Award nominations.
Mr. Lehane's seventh and last novel to date was "Shutter Island," which came out in 2003. Since three years is a long time, fans have been wondering what Mr. Lehane was up to. Why no new books, they want to know.
It is not uncommon for authors to find something that works for them, brings them success and legions of fans, and to continue down that path. Sue Grafton, Robert B. Parker, Mary Higgins Clark, Dick Francis have continued writing the type of books their fans expect and crave, much to the delight of all concerned.
Others have chosen a different path. Walter Mosley only writes an Easy Rawlins book once in a while, although he produces three or four books a year. Ross Thomas bounced from espionage fiction to caper novels to pure suspense to crime stories.
The new book by Mr. Lehane is, to understate it, ambitious. A historical novel set in the Boston area, it may well approach 900 manuscript pages. He's up to 850 now, and nearly finished, so there is hope for those of us who have been eagerly awaiting it. In the meantime, so that readers can have a bit of a fix, he has just released a short-story collection, "Coronado" (Morrow, 232 pages, $24.95), a handsome assemblage of five stories and a play.
I'd read all of the stories before, and saw the play performed, so I knew exactly what I was getting when I picked it up. Two of the stories ("Running Out of Dog" and "Until Gwen") were selected for "Best American Mysteries of the Year," the former, a masterpiece, also making it into "Best American Mystery Stories of the Century."
A story as good as "Running Out of Dog" is a rarity in that it generally takes a novel-length work of prose fiction to embed itself into the brain. Years after I first read it, I can still quote lines from it. It is the story of Jewel, a gorgeous, young married woman with perhaps too many admirers, which is where the trouble begins, as it so often does. "A small town is a hard place to keep a secret," Mr. Lehane writes, "and a small southern town with all that heat and all those open windows is an even harder place than most."
One of the men taken with Jewel is Blue, a veteran returned from Vietnam who likes to shoot things. A brick shy of a full load, he's not altogether smart nor altogether sane. But he worships Jewel, partly because she's nice to him, and dreams of taking her away from Eden, maybe to Australia.
Of Blue, the narrator says, "Blue was the kind of guy you never knew if he was quiet because he didn't have anything to say or, because what he had to say was so horrible, he knew enough not to send it out into the atmosphere."
Jewel's kindness kindled something previously unknown to Blue: hope.
And when hope comes late to a man, it's a dangerous thing. Hope is for the young, the children. Hope in a fullgrown man — particularly one with as little acquaintanceship with it or prospect for it as Blue — well, that kind of hope burns as it dies, boils blood white, and leaves something mean behind when it's done.
With the exception of "Poachers," a story by Tom Franklin, I have never read another crime story that captures the sound and feel of a simple southern town as perfectly as this one — incomprehensibly, as it was written by someone born and raised in New England.
The best of the remaining stories is "Until Gwen," which Mr. Lehane adapted for the stage as "Coronado" — mainly for his brother, an actor, who was becoming typecast as a nice guy. The part of the villain was written for him, and what a villain he is! Pure. Not a shred, not an iota, not a soupçon of decency between his toes and his hair.
"Until Gwen" is dark. Members of its small cast either die or are shackled to eternal despair. The play has a much larger cast, but the result is pretty much the same. Either their bodies or their souls die. The short story is linear, essentially a series of confrontations between an evil father and his pained, angry son. Revelations of amorality and murder unfold as slowly and pungently as someone eating a rotted artichoke, ultimately revealing the dark, desiccated heart.
"Coronado" adds characters awash in anger, betrayal, and murder. Seemingly vying for time in the spotlight, even death can't get them off the stage as they are whisked back and forth in time, between their youthful passions and their tired surrenders.
When Mr. Lehane's next novel is published, I will drop everything to read it. My hope, being eternally optimistic and happy, is that he doesn't doom all his characters. He makes the people in his books so vivid, so alive, that losing them is like losing someone who could be a close friend if you just had more time together.
Mr. Penzler is the proprietor of the Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan and the series editor of the annual "Best American Mystery Stories." He can be reached at ottopenzler@mysteriousbookshop.com.
