Patrick Kenzie & Angela Gennaro
Created by Dennis Lehane

Dennis Lehane's 1994 A Drink Before the War marked a big-time debut, and introduced childhood pals turned Boston private eyes PATRICK KENZIE and ANGELA GENNARO. Patrick and Angie grew up in an Irish/Polish/Italian working-class neighbourhood where "your boundaries begin in the schoolyard and last a lifetime," (according to Margaret Cannon), who summed it all up as "a major debut." They now run their dettive agency out of a church where "all manners of unholiness cross their threshold".

Patrick and Angela are on-again, off-again lovers, who nevertheless seem to work well together, although they often seem to rely on Bubba Rogowski, their arms-dealing old school buddy who I find more interesting than either of them, despite his ridiculous name. (Bubba? Sheesh!) He's described by Patrick in A Drink Before the War as "an absolute anachronism in these times -- he hates everything and everybody except Angie and myself, but unlike others of similar inclination, he doesn't waste any time thinking about it. He doesn't write letters to the editor or hate mail to the president, he doesn't form groups or stage marches or consider his hate as anything other than a completely natural aspect of his world, like breathing or the shot glass. Bubba has all the self-awareness of a carburetor and takes even less notice of anyone else--unless they get in his way. He's six feet four inches, 235 pounds of raw adrenaline and disassociated anger. And he'd shoot anyone who blinked at me the wrong way."

Personally, I'm not yet convinced. In the first novel, I found the characters seemed just too much like characters, if you know what I mean, and subsequent novels seem to have wandered all over the stylistic map, nipping into the serial killer genre here, borrowing a little David and Maddy from Moonlighting there (albeit in a suitably hard-boiled way, of course). A lot of violence, and overblown plots full of child abusers, rapists, wife beaters, serial killers and other monsters to seemingly prove Lehane's hard-boiled cred, plus a little soul-searching, and the almost-obligatory by now psycho sidekick make these seem like almost a blueprint for nineties hardboiled fiction, albeit on a larger scale than most -- prompting me at one point to unintentionally refer to the fourth book in the series as Long, Baby, Long. But I must also admit my resistance is weakening....

And what do I know anyway? The series has proven extremely popular, with Lehane's reputation growing in stature with each new book. The successful film adaptation of his standalone Mystic River certainly didn't hurt, either. And now Ben Affleck, another Boston boy, is directing Gone, Baby, Gone, set for release in 2007.

UNDER OATH

• "A Drink Before the War" was a hauntingly brilliant debut that carried the theme of war--between the sexes, the races, the tribes and generations--into the realm of art. Almost a year after I read it, I can still remember its impact and how I sat up all night devouring every page." (Margaret Cannon, mystery columnist, The Globe and Mail)

.....

NOVELS

• A Drink Before the War (1994)..Buy this book
• Darkness, Take My Hand (1996)...Buy this book
• Sacred (1997)..Buy this book
• Gone, Baby, Gone (1998)...Buy this book
• Prayers For Rain (1999)...Buy this book
• Moonlight Mile (2010) ..Buy this book

FILM

• GONE, BABY, GONE...Buy this DVD
  (2007, Miramax)
  Based on the novel by Dennis Lehane
  Screenplay by Ben Affleck and Aaron Stockard
  Directed by Ben Affleck
  Produced by Ben Affleck, Sean Bailey, Alan Ladd Jr. and Danton Rissner
  Executive producer: David Crockett
  Starring Casey Affleck as PATRICK KENZIE
  and Michelle Monaghan as ANGIE GENNARO
  with Slaine as Bubba Rogowski
  Also starring Morgan Freeman, Ed Harris, Amy Ryan
  Whew. It's been a long time a-coming, but we finally have a great P.I. film. And I don't mean "pretty good" or "not bad" -- i mean "great." Ben Affleck makes his directorial debut, stepping up to the plate and knocking it out of the park. This is an almost perfect film, from the razor-sharp cast (inluding the deservedly Oscar-nominated Amy Ryan, and featuring Michelle Monaghan and Ben's kid brother Casey's as P.I. couple Angie Genarro and Patrick Kenzie) to the bravura adaptation of Lehan'e novel, which cuts all the fat off, and gets right to the story's dark, black heart.. A measure of this film's success is the anger some have expressed at the film's ending. Not that they didn't believe it, but that they didn't agree with it. Morally ambivalent, brooding, bittersweet -- this one will pierce your heart. Guaranteed. It's not Chinatown or The Maltese Falcon, but it's not far behind. This is the sort of film that reminds me why I love detective fiction. Highly and heartily recommended.

RELATED LINKS

• The January Interview with Dennis Lehane
  1999 interview conducted by Karen G. Anderson.
  .
• Dennis Lehane and George Pelecanos: Hard-boiled Buddies
  Illuminating interview conducted by Crescent Blues, featuring Dennis Lehane and fellow crimewriter George Pelecanos at a joint reading and book signing at the Mystery Bookshop in Bethesda, Md., in June 1999. 
  
  
• A Drink Before the War
  The Thrilling Detective review by Christopher Friesen.
  
  
• Ah, Boston, You're My Home:
  This site's preliminary listing of Beantown eyes.

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. Thanks to Gerald So and Bluefox808 for their help here, with this one.