Amanda McCready has been kidnapped once before; in Gone Baby Gone Patrick Kenzie and his partner, Angela Gennaro, tracked her down when she was kidnapped at the age of four. Now sixteen, she has disappeared once again and the only person who appears to care is her aunt, Beatrix McCready, who approaches Kenzie and asks him for his help. But as he begins to dig into the case, a perplexing set of contradictions and a large amount of firepower conspire to confuse matters and attempt to put him off the scent. Will he untangle this web and find her, and will he be able to protect his own family in the process?

I’ve read every single book in Lehane’s Kenzie & Gennaro series, chronicling their adventures from A Drink Before the War to Prayers for Rain, and it fast became my favourite book series because of its stark adherence to a grey reality. The simplicity of the writing was carefully crafted and did nothing to detract from the complexity of the storylines but, instead, enhanced it and helped it shine. So when I picked up Moonlight Mile, the latest and last installment in this fabulous series, I looked forward to another foray into the Boston of Lehane’s imagination and the respect and clarity with which he describes aspects of the world that most people prefer to ignore or, worse, mock and trivialise.

It’s a shame, then, that Moonlight Mile didn’t quite conform to my expectations. Picking up on the Amanda McCready storyline that was last seen in Gone Baby Gone, the fourth in the six-book series, I expected to see the same contrast between a deep and gentle regard for victims of any type of abuse, and the stark and disturbing reality of exploitative situations. Things didn’t quite work out that way, and it was almost as though Patrick Kenzie’s more advanced age restricted Lehane’s ability to produce these characteristic traits. In fact, in a couple of places I picked up on the use of language (such as the frivolous use of the word “rape”) that is wholly against the usual style employed not only in this series but in Lehane’s books as a rule.

In addition to these complaints, Lehane’s general lack of understanding of computers becomes clear a few times and serves to pull the more tech-savvy reader out of the story. Whether or not these interruptions of my suspension of disbelief made me more receptive to other complaints is something I couldn’t give a definitive answer to, but as a quick check with a more technologically-minded person would have prevented them from occurring at all, it’s a bit disappointing to have to notice them at all.

That said, it remains a Kenzie & Gennaro novel, and their relationship – changed through marriage and the daughter they’ve had since we last encountered them – remains a very realistic and intriguing peek into the minds of people who, despite their paper veins and ink blood, seem as three-dimensional as you or I. I enjoyed it a great deal despite its issues… But all in all I wish Lehane could have maintained the high standard he set for himself with each preceding volume.

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