Kenzie and Gennaro Series

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

A series of Hardboiled Detective novels that started the career of Dennis Lehane, now famous as the author behind Shutter Island and Mystic River, both of which were adapted into successful films. Gone Baby Gone, the fourth book in the series, was also adapted into a film, with Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan playing the title characters.

The premise of the books is fairly simple: Patrick Kenzie is a wise-ass private detective working out of the tough, working-class Boston neighborhood of Dorchester. Always by his side is his faithful partner, the beautiful Angie Gennaro. Though they start out as Platonic Life Partners, Patrick (in his narration) makes no secret of the fact that he's been in love with Angie since they were both teenagers. With their small, struggling detective agency, Patrick and Angie take it upon themselves to help every poor, downtrodden Bostonian who comes their way. Along the way, they end up tangling with everybody from drug lords, to serial killers, to Corrupt Corporate Executives to crazed stalkers, standing up for what's right and occasionally leaving corpses in their wake. Despite the loads of horror that they have to deal with, Patrick and Angie manage to keep their sanity through the Power of Friendship, both with each other and with the other residents of their close-nit neighborhood. Naturally, they end up falling in love with each other along the way.

With a heavy dose of realism and occasional social commentary, the series manages to subvert many cliches of detective fiction, and it's considered a prime example of "Neo Noir". In particular, it strongly averts Status Quo Is God, with many deliberate arcs over the course of six books.

The books published so far:

  • A Drink Before the War - Patrick and Angie take an assignment from a powerful politician to find some "important documents" that were stolen by his cleaning lady. In their search, they end up stumbling into the middle of a vicious gang war that threatens to tear their neighborhood apart.
  • Darkness, Take My Hand - Patrick and Angie spring into action when a long-dormant serial killer apparently resumes his killing spree. A pretty impressive feat, considering he's been behind bars for over fifteen years...
  • Sacred - Patrick and Angie agree to help a wealthy recluse find his missing daughter. Patrick also looks into the disappearance of his old friend/mentor, who vanished while investigating the same case. Features a brief departure from the series' typical Boston setting, with the action temporarily relocating to Tampa, Florida.
  • Gone Baby Gone - Patrick and Angie get pulled into the fray when a little girl's mysterious disappearance causes a huge stir in the neighborhood. Along the way, Patrick is forced to make the hardest choice of his career.
  • Prayers For Rain - After splitting up in the fourth book, Patrick and Angie reunite to take down a psychopathic stalker.
  • Moonlight Mile - Picking up eleven years after the last book, Patrick and Angie are a married couple with children. They get pulled into one more crazy case when a teenage Amanda McCready (the vanished girl from the fourth book) vanishes again.
Tropes used in Kenzie and Gennaro Series include:
  • Abusive Parents: A recurring theme.
    • Brian Corliss from Moonlight Mile proves to be such a Jerkass to his daughter Sophie that Angie has to excuse herself to avoid punching him in the face. After his wife divorced him he only started fighting for his daughter Sophie's custody when he found out his ex-wife was living with another woman, and wore shirts with homophobic slogans around them, and then the day her mother died of stomach cancer had the gall to show up outside the hospital, and exploited the fact that (then) New Hampshire had no protections for same-sex spouses over children to win custody over her. Once Sophie lives with him he then tries to take complete control of her life, including what she eats, and threatens to throw her out of the house if she doesn't lose ten pounds. It's no wonder she winds up running away.
  • Action Girl: Angie. Not as blatant as most examples, but Patrick makes it clear that she’s a hell of a lot more formidable in a fight than he is.
  • Always Someone Better: Jay Becker, introduced in the third book. He's every bit as skilled as Patrick, but he's slicker and much more experienced, and he has a lucrative job with a big-time detective agency.
  • Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Over the course of the series, Bubba stockpiles loads of high explosives and combat weaponry, and he kills, maims, and/or tortures scads of Patrick's enemies. When he gets sent to jail at the beginning of the third book, it's for having an unregistered handgun.
  • Ascended Extra: Phil Dimassi in the second book, after his Heel Face Turn.
  • Author Appeal: As rough as Dorchester can be (i.e. VERY) Lehane's love of his native Boston still comes through.
  • Badass Normal: Both Patrick and Angie. As Lehane puts it:

I decided, I do not want the people [in my books] to be veterans of any war I don't want them to know some sort of obscure Eastern kung fu philosophy that'll help them whoop ass. I want them to be regular, vulnerable people. They're not braver than most people, but they stick with it.

  • Bad Guy Bar: The Fillmore lounge, in the fourth book.
  • Berserk Button: Threatening Patrick and Angie (particularly Angie) is a good way to get on Bubba’s bad side.
    • In a much darker example, catching someone being irresponsible with fire will drive Patrick's dad into an unstoppable rage.
  • Bittersweet Ending: A hallmark of the series. Gone Baby Gone is the most obvious example.
  • Black Best Friend: Oscar Lee to Devin Amronklin.
  • Black Comedy: Though the books are pretty serious, Patrick's narration carries a definite undercurrent of this, which Word of God is a defense mechanism. The climax of Moonlight Mile, for instance, alternates between horrific and screamingly funny.
  • Boston: Word of God is he intentionally presents a version of the city that's more in line with how it was when he was growing up, and the modern Boston is actually nowhere near as bad as portrayed in his books, in part thanks to the "Boston Miracle" in the 1990s that drastically reduced violent crime.
  • Chekhov's Gun: In Moonlight Mile Amanda's No. 19 Red Sox Jersey proves to be this, since it's the jersey of player Josh Beckett and the town where Amanda was taken in the Berkshires during her first disappearance is called Becket, and where Patrick and Angie eventually find her.
  • Chekhov's Gunman: Angie’s grandfather, “Fat Freddy” Constantine, in the second book. Angie uses her connections with him to capture and interrogate the mob flunkies who know the killer’s identity.
  • Chekhov's Skill: One of the FBI agents in the second book briefly mentions that he's a literary buff. Because of this, he's able to recognize all of the subtle references to Othello in the killer's notes. This saves Patrick's life in his final confrontation with the killer. It turns out that "Othello" is a codeword that signals his dog to attack.
  • Complete Monster: Several. The serial killer Gerry Glynn is the most extreme example, and even delights in his monsterdom.
  • Corrupt Corporate Executive: Trevor Stone in the third book.
  • Crapsack World: With its heavy levels of crime, poverty, racism, and corruption, Dorchester definitely qualifies. This is often overlooked because the residents have so much local pride.
  • Demoted to Extra: Bubba Rogowski in The Movie of Gone Baby Gone.
  • Deus Ex Machina: Patrick's lawyer, Cheswick Hartman, often functions as this. He only shows up when Patrick gets himself into legal trouble, and he always gets him off scot-free.
  • Do Not Call Me "Paul": Calling Patrick "Pat" is a good way to get on his bad side.
  • Domestic Abuser: Phil, Angie's ex-husband. The first book opens with Angie sporting a black eye, and Patrick relates a previous incident where Angie told him to "be reasonable", and Patrick's response was to reasonably beat the hell out of Phil with a pool cue. This was not the first time this happened.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Boston's Irish Mafia plays host to some vicious, sadistic people. But even they're repulsed by the serial killer in the second book, refusing to believe that such a person could have grown up in "the neighborhood".
  • Everyone Went to School Together: Most of the main cast, including Patrick, Angie, Phil, Bubba, and many of the psychos/mobsters that they have to deal with. Justified, since Dorchester is an exceptionally close-knit neighborhood.
  • Fictional Counterpart: The Church of Truth and Revelation, from the third book, is a not-so-subtle counterpart to the Church of Scientology.
  • Five-Man Band
  • Friend in the Black Market: Bubba, who can always be trusted to find the necessary ordinance to help with any situation, and used to be a Marine.
  • Hardboiled Detective: Patrick Kenzie is a refreshing subversion. He has a fairly Dark and Troubled Past, and he encounters plenty of horror in his job. But in spite of it all, he remains an easily relatable everyman with plenty of stable relationships, and he often uses humor to focus on what's important. He has a right to be angsty, but he rarely wears his angst on his sleeve.
  • Heel Face Turn: Phil Dimassi gets a big one. He's introduces in the first book as Angie's abusive, alcoholic husband who Patrick just refers to as "the asshole". In the second book, we learn that he was once Patrick's best friend, and that most of the animosity between them stems from Patrick's jealousy over him marrying Angie. After he and Angie get a divorce and he quits drinking, he and Patrick begin to reconnect.
  • Heterosexual Life Partners: Devin Amronklin and Oscar Lee, Patrick's contacts in the Boston Police Department.
  • Ludicrous Gibs: The result of Dre getting hit by the incoming Acela train in Moonlight Mile, to the point that it takes Patrick a few minutes to understand exactly what he's seeing splashed all over the other cars.
  • Memetic Badass: Patrick is an in-universe example. After he single-handedly takes down Gerry Glynn, he becomes something of a local legend around Dorchester, and there are several True Crime novels published about his exploits.
  • Intrepid Reporter: Richie Colgan, who usually assists Patrick by giving evidence to the press and digging up information.
  • Love Triangle: Patrick, Angie and Phil were in one for the longest time, since Angie actually lost her virginity to Patrick, panicked, and then ran to Phil. It takes them many years to settle it and then Phil ends up dying.
  • MacGuffin: Senator Paulson's photos in the first book.
  • Never Live It Down: In-Universe, the fact that in Gone Baby Gone Patrick wound up taking down several corrupt cops has permanently put him on the BPD's shit-list.
  • Only in Florida: The section of Sacred set in Tampa has shades of this. The craziest stuff in the book happens in Florida.
  • Parental Neglect: Helene McCready, in the fourth book, is criminally neglectful of her daughter Amanda.
  • Platonic Life Partners: Patrick and Angie, in the beginning. It doesn't last.
  • Politically-Incorrect Villain: Sterling Mulkern, the corrupt, openly racist senator in the first book.
  • Private Detective: Patrick and Angie, natch. It's actually a relatively realistic depiction--most of their cases start out as missing person cases, which PIs often handle in real life. Though it's rarely shown for obvious reasons, Patrick mentions that the bulk of his cases are pretty mundane ones involving corporate embezzlement and similar crimes. When the duo get involved in real crimes, there's always a justification for it, like a criminal having a personal connection to Patrick, a client deliberately avoiding police scrutiny, or Dorchester residents' refusal to trust the police.
  • Psycho Sidekick: Bubba Rugowski, Patrick's friend and occasional bodyguard. He's a violent, sadistic, openly racist gun nut who lives in a warehouse surrounded by land mines. But for all of his, uh...eccentricities, he's fiercely loyal to Patrick and Angie, and will do anything to help them in their cases. In Moonlight Mile Patrick takes him along and repeatedly tells him that he can't just shoot everyone, not that Bubba listens.
  • Put on a Bus: Bubba goes to jail at the beginning of the third book, and isn't around for the fourth.
  • A Real Man Is a Killer: Averted hard. Patrick is only forced to kill a few times in the series, and each time he feels terrible about it. So much that by the third book, he outright refuses to kill the Big Bad when he has his final confrontation with him.
  • Redemption Equals Death: Phil in the second book. He's killed by Gerry Glynn when he tries to take revenge on him for attacking Angie.
  • Religious Horror: Lots of it in the second book. Victims of the serial killer are always found crucified, and it turns out that there are actually three killers who have modeled themselves after the Holy Trinity. There's Gerry Glynn (the Father), Alec Hardiman (the Son), and Evandro Arujo (the Holy Ghost).
  • The Rival: Jay Becker.
  • Scars Are Forever: Patrick has a hideous scar on his stomach from when his abusive father burned him with an iron. In the second book, he also gets a scar on his face from Gerry Glynn slashing him with a knife, prompting him to grow a beard to cover it. In the same book, Angie gets a scar on her stomach from getting shot.
  • Sequel Gap: 11 years between Prayers For Rain and Moonlight Mile. Lehane explains this as being the result of Patrick not talking to him.
  • Single-Target Sexuality: Averted. Angie may be the love of Patrick's life, but she's far from his only love interest. Aside from various lovers, he has a stable, happy relationship with a single mother in the second book, which ends when his involvement in the Gerry Glynn case puts her daughter in danger.
  • The Starscream: Yefin in Moonlight Mile puts a bullet in his boss at the end of the book, and even better, Amanda gave him the idea.
  • Terrible Trio: In the second book, it turns out that there are actually three serial killers: Gerry Glynn, Alec Hardiman, and Evandro Arujo.
  • Those Two Guys: Devin and Oscar again.
  • Trauma Conga Line: The series is essentially a very long one for Patrick and Angie, and at the end of Moonlight Mile Patrick quits the business for good, even tossing his gun in the Charles, and decides to go back to school.
    • In the same book, Beatrice McReady is revealed to have gone through this after the events of Gone Baby Gone, since in addition to the events of that book, which left her husband imprisoned, she also lost her son in an auto accident and was cut off from contacting Amanda, who then goes missing again.
  • Truth in Television: Many of the series' depictions of domestic abuse are inspired by Lehane's time spent working with abused children.
  • Villain with Good Publicity: Trevor Stone in the third book.
  • Will They or Won't They?: Patrick and Angie in the beginning, until they hook up in the second book. It's then double subverted when Angie moves out at the end of Gone Baby Gone, but in the next book they get back together for good and have a daughter by the sixth.
  • Wise Beyond Their Years: The now 16 Amanda McCready to an extent that Patrick finds both admirable and kind of disturbing. He notes that you'd have to become this with a mother like Helene.
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