A good movie. In fact a really good movie, but as a huge fan of Lehane's books and this series in particular, I was kind of disappointed by how much Affleck left out and he cut Angie's character (Patrick's partner/lover) out way too much. Still an amazingly good movie though.
I recommend the books, and for those interested here is the series:
A DRINK BEFORE THE WAR: Meet Patrick Kenzie. He is a smartass private detective who lost his faith, but happily works with his best friend and one time lover, Angela Gennaro in their own bell tower office. Angie is married to Phil, Phil's an ass hole who Bubba wants to kill. The intrepid investigative duo are hired by two state senators to locate a black cleaning woman who filched several sensitive "documents." They find her easily enough, but the items she took, which point to child prostitution and political corruption, cause gang warfare and murder. Lehane's minimal use of literary references helps establish character, as do his frequent allusions to child abuse and wife battering. Rough and tumble action for a high energy, likable pair.....My rating: 3.5/5
DARKNESS, TAKE MY HAND: In his outstanding second novel, Lehane (whose debut, A Drink Before the War, won a Shamus award) explores horror close to home. Boston PIs Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro agree to help psychiatrist Diandra Warren. Her patient, using the name Moira Kenzie, has said she was abused by Kevin Hurlihy, a sociopathic Irish Mafia henchman who grew up in Angie and Patrick's neighborhood and has a tendency to want Kenzie dead. Hurlihy may have threatened the doctor, who fears that her son, Jason, may be in danger. While Patrick and Angela shadow Jason, another former neighbor, Kara Rider, is found crucified. Sensing a connection, Patrick seeks out a retired cop turned saloonkeeper who recalls a hushed-up crucifixion murder in the neighborhood 20 years ago. The suspect in that killing is in prison, so he can't be murdering again, can he? As Patrick probes painful memories, he faces losing the woman he loves, Grace Cole, who is appalled at the brutality invading their lives. By the time Patrick and Angie realize how the murders relate to their own youth, they are the next targets in a string of brutally graphic and cruel serial killings. The showdown is unpredictable, like the New England autumn which, in Lehane's depiction, is informed by a wind "so chilly and mean it seemed the exhalation of a Puritan god." The story is densely peopled with multidimensional characters; there are no forgettable, walk-on roles on Lehane's stage. Lehane's voice, original, haunting and straight from the heart...My rating: 4.5/5, AMAZING.
SACRED: Dying billionaire Trevor Stone has his thugs kidnap sleuths Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro and bring them to his mansion so he can hire them to find his missing daughter, Desiree. She is grief-stricken over the death of her mother and the impending death of her father but it becomes clear that she may not be the sweet and beautiful daughter her father describes. Patrick's mentor, Jay Becker, was the first investigator on the case but he has also disappeared. Despite still mourning their losses and wounds (psychological and physical) from their last case, Patrick and Angie follow the trail to Florida after a brief encounter with a group of religious swindlers who may be involved with the disappearances. Every person they meet adds more confusion and conflicting information to the puzzling case. The intricate mystery of the changing identity of Desiree, dangerous car chases, bloody shoot-outs, and the humorous dialogue between Patrick and Angie, all with subtle romantic overtones, will keep you happily turning pages...My rating: 3/5. A good read with some great twists and turns and Desiree as well as well as Jay Becker are great characters, but the plot is a little too ridiculous and over the top. But Patrick and Angie's rapport, especially in this book is never better.
GONE BABY GONE: Vanished, in this complex and unsettling fourth case for PIs Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro (after Sacred, 1997) is four-year-old Amanda McCready, taken one night from her apartment in Dorchester, a working-class section of Boston, where her mother had left her alone. Kenzie and Gennaro, hired by the child's aunt and uncle, join in an unlikely alliance with Remy Broussard and Nick Raftopoulos, known as Poole, the two cops with the department's Crimes Against Children squad who are assigned to the case. In tracing the history of Amanda's neglectful mother, whose past involved her with a drug lord and his minions, the foursome quickly find themselves tangling with Boston's crime underworld and involved in what appears to be a coup among criminals. Lehane develops plenty of tension between various pairs of parties: the good guys looking for Amanda and the bad guys who may know where she is; the two PIs and the two cops; various police and federal agencies; opposing camps in the underworld; and Patrick and Angie, who are finally lovers as well as business partners. All is delivered with abundant violence?e.g., bloated and mutilated corpses; gangland executions; shoot-outs with weapons of prodigious firepower; descriptions of sexual abuse of small children; threats of rape and murder?that serves to make Amanda's likely fate all the more chilling. Lehane tackles corruption in many forms as he brings his complicated plot to its satisfying resolution, at the same time leaving readers to ponder moral questions about social and individual responsibility long after the last page is turned...5/5. One of the best books written in the last 20 years, only thing Lehane has done surpassing this is Mystic River.
PRAYERS FOR RAIN: After the shattering consequences of their last case (Gone, Baby, Gone), Lehane's PI partners Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro are back, but not together. Estranged from Angie personally and professionally, Patrick works the old Boston neighborhoodAwith the occasional help of his loyal and happily homicidal pal Bubba Rogowski while Angie has moved uptown to a blue-chip corporate security firm. Enter Karen Nichols, a nice, hard-working sort who's being stalked. Patrick and Bubba are glad to take care of the stalkerAin an extremely satisfying way and everybody expects a happy ending. Which no one gets, because six months later the woman dives to her death off the Custom House tower. It turns out that everything that could go wrong with her life didAall at the same time. Everyone, including the police and Karen's strangely unsympathetic family chalks it up to a streak of extraordinarily bad luck, but Patrick is suspicious. He doesn't believe in coincidences and needs Angie's help to uncover a killer whose methods seem to put him beyond the lawAone who makes his victims do the work, by manipulating their minds and lives until suicide seems a plausible alternative. Lehane's sense of place is acute, and his ear is finely attuned to the voices of Boston's many neighborhoods, as Patrick and Angie trace Karen's downward spiral, from the exclusive, cobbled streets of Beacon Hill to the wharves and bars of the North End. As the plot twists through layers of old deceit and current corruption, the victims multiply while the killer remains elusive, protected by the terror he inspires. With sharp dialogue, inventively gruesome violence and the darkest of dark humor, Lehane's fifth novel proves again that he's the hippest heir of Hammett and Chandler...My rating: 4.5/5. A very exciting read that will keep you guessing after you think you've figured it out.
..great flilm, superbrb the story was amazing and the ending is just fantastic. Ben should direct more
