SMALL MERCIES (Lehane, 2023)
After two disappointing releases – WORLD GONE BY and SINCE WE FELL, the former being a forgettable coda to an otherwise unforgettable historical fiction trilogy and the latter a notable though deeply flawed effort at playing outside his usual wheelhouse (I think, at the time, I called it his effort at GONE GIRL – and not in a good way) – Lehane roars back to life with, perhaps, his best work yet, one I will gladly mention in the same breath as MYSTIC RIVER, the masterpiece to which SMALL MERCIES feels like a spiritual successor: after a middling effort at a female protagonist in SINCE WE FELL, Lehane has crafted, in MERCIES's Mary Pat Fennessy, one of his most fascinating protagonists, a "broken and unbreakable" mother on a vengeance-driven suicide run through the mid-70s Southie underbelly ("Marty Butler" standing in for Whitey Bulger) on the eve of the 1974 school desegregation, an uncompromising ripping of the duct-tape bandaid from one of the ugliest, darkest periods in Boston's appalling racist history. A must-read; my complete reading list, from 2013 to the present, lives here.
P.S. While I believe SMALL MERCIES was meant to be a standalone, should Lehane decide to continue the story of Detective Michael "Bobby" Coyne, I'd be beyond thrilled...
