This novel fits smugly in the hard boiled detective genre, which as a rule I despise. Celebrated stylists such as Mosley, Burke and Chandler for various reasons have left me cold, their books unfinished or leaving me determined never to read another, and yet I keep reading Lehane's Kenzie and Genaro. This third in the series has them investigating the disappearance of a billionaire's beautiful daughter. The reviewer who calls this formulaic with silly action scenes is right. In particular there's this scene on a bridge that is way too Hollywood action scene, with trauma inflicted on human beings that shouldn't allow them to walk away. And we're supposed to credit that because some punk works for the IRS he can freeze accounts and screw up your credit cards by himself at will within a few hours. The plot points of this one is conventional, even cliched noir, and plot-wise this third book is the weakest in the series so far.
Yet I enjoyed this novel and intend to read more in the series. Why? Not two pages in there's an exchange between Patrick Kenzie and Angie Genaro that caused me to smile widely and encapsulated the reasons I keep reading this series:
"How can you not like Star Trek?" Angie said.
"Easy. I watch it, it annoys me, I turn it off"
"Even Next Generation?"
"What's that?" I said.
"When you were born," she said, "I bet your father held you up to your mother and said, 'Look, hon, you just gave birth to a beautiful crabby old man.'"
That's why I keep reading. Because I enjoy myself along the way. Because unlike the usual hard-boiled private detective, Patrick isn't some lone gunman but has a partner--a woman he loves, respects and depends upon who is a kick-ass heroine who always has his back, and because Patrick is enough of a smart aleck to amuse but not so much to annoy me. Because I love Kenzie and Gennaro separately and together.
