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Moonlight Mile  By  cover art

Moonlight Mile

By: Dennis Lehane
Narrated by: Jonathan Davis
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Publisher's summary

Acclaimed New York Times best-selling author Dennis Lehane delivers an explosive tale of integrity and vengeance - heralding the long-awaited return of private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro.

Amanda McCready was four years old when she vanished from a Boston neighborhood 12 years ago. Kenzie and Gennaro risked everything to find the young girl - only to orchestrate her return to a neglectful mother and a broken home.

Now Amanda is 16 - and gone again. Haunted by their consciences, Kenzie and Gennaro revisit the case that troubled them the most. Their search leads them into a world of identity thieves, methamphetamine dealers, a mentally unstable crime boss and his equally demented wife, a priceless, thousand-year-old cross, and a happily homicidal Russian gangster. It's a world in which motives and allegiances constantly shift and mistakes are fatal.

In their desperate fight to confront the past and find Amanda McCready, Kenzie and Gennaro will be forced to question if it's possible to do the wrong thing and still be right or to do the right thing and still be wrong. As they face an evil that goes beyond broken families and broken dreams, they discover that the sins of yesterday don't always stay buried, and the crimes of today could end their lives.

©2010 Dennis Lehane (P)2010 HarperCollins Publishers

What listeners say about Moonlight Mile

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    342
  • 4 Stars
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  • 3 Stars
    123
  • 2 Stars
    21
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Performance
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  • 4 Stars
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    48
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Story
  • 4 out of 5 stars
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  • 4 Stars
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  • 3 Stars
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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

Oh Dennis, what happened to you?

The usually reliable Lehane hit a clunker with this one. A plot line that is so convoluted and unbelivable that listening was pure agony. Patrick, the star of several of his previous novels, spends most of this one moping around thinking about his young daughter and worrying about paying his bills. Perhaps Lehane is having a personal crisis in his life and chose this as his outlet, if so, don't do it again. One had to groan at his repeated moaning about a gas guzzling Hummer...when Patrick was driving a Jeep SUV, not exactly a "green auto." Just when you thought it could not possibly get any worse, he came up with an ending that totally defied logic. Unlike other reviewers, I sorta liked the reader, his rather pleasant voice was the only thing that kept me listening to the end, all be it with a lot of fast forwards.

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14 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

Terrible Boston accent

I just started listening and hope I can get past the narrator's TERRIBLE fake Boston accent. It is totally inconsistent and sounds nothing like a Boston accent (I'm a native). Why make the narrator read in this accent if it's not even close? I'm a big Lehane fan so I hope I can stop cringing at every 'Cah in Hawvahd Yawd'...So annoying.

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11 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

A brilliant book. His best by far.

If you could sum up Moonlight Mile in three words, what would they be?

That's (a) goofy question.
This is about the eighth book I have read by Mr. Lehane, with (I believe) Jonathan Davis narrating all of them, although maybe not. In any case, this book is a powerful demonstration of all of the gifts of both of these men. I will also note that this book is half the length of his standard book, and I think it's no coincidence that it's the best of the lot. The plot covers a lot of distance, but it never gets out of control, even when we are treated to the monstrous Russian gangsters who do truly unspeakable things. Prepare yourself for that. The gore is a little over the top, but I will grant him license (as if he cares about whom I grant what) because both the stories and the characters are all brilliantly written. In addition, Mr. Lehane maintains his extraordinary descriptive ability when it comes to almost all aspects of his beloved Boston. And Mr. Davis is likewise fantastic at reproducing the many Boston accents and sub-dialects, the sounds of the streets, and even of the suburbs, although this last is the least of his concerns. I won't give you the plot, as it is much too complicated, too multi-faceted to describe in such a small space; plus, you deserve to have the pleasure of discovering it yourself. I do wonder about several things, which gives you something of an idea of how these books and their characters have come alive for me. In Moonlight Mile Patrick and Angie have a four-year-old daughter, Gabriella. They are married. And I think it is not spoiling it to reveal that at the end of the book Patrick decides to leave his profession. You have to wonder if Mr. Lehane will develop some other characters, or what. I'll be glad to see. The Drop is also a great book, and it does not belong to the Kenzie-Gennaro series.

Who was your favorite character and why?

I think it is not unfair, this being fiction and all, to merge Patrick and Angie together into one character, which in some great marriages comes very close to that. They are both fully human, warts and all. They both want their version of the American dream, and the both struggle mightily with the obstacles in the way of attaining the dream. The passion between them is a gorgeous thing to listen to: both Mr. Lehane and Mr. Davis are artists of the first order in writing about romance, often an extremely difficult thing. The fun that they have with little Gabby is delightful. It reminds me of when my sons were children. The only real cartoon character is Bubba, and I'll give him that. Like Hawk in Robert Parker's books, there has to be a mysteriously powerful guy who can swoop in and yank the damsel off the railroad tracks.

Have you listened to any of Jonathan Davis’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

I have only listened to Mr. Davis narrating Lehane's books, about eight of them now. He is great in all of them. I will look for some other author's work with Mr. Davis reading, but he is so perfect in these that it's a little hard imagining him in another world completely. If he can master accents of places other than the Boston area, I would say that he is truly a gifted gentleman.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

The end of the book is very moving, but there are quite a number of scenes in which the passion/friendship/partnership that exists between Patrick and Angie comes fully alive. I sure wish I could write like that.

Any additional comments?

If you enjoy mystery/thrillers, this should be a delightful experience for you. Save the twice-as-long novels for later. This one and The Drop are some fine, fine entertainment.

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10 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Not what I expected

I'd heard such rave reviews of Dennis Lehane that I was expecting a really terrific detective novel. Characters were thin and plot predictable. I was hoping for another Michael Connelly, and got a hard-boiled Miss Marple. Maybe my expectations were too high, but I was really disappointed and don't think I'll look for any more by this author.

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6 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

What did Jonathan Davis do?

I had listened to the first 5 books of the Kenzie & Gennaro series by Dennis Lehane. All were superb, and all were narrated by Jonathan Davis. In those five books, Davis narrated this first-person detective thriller, and used a normal narrating voice for that of Patrick Kenzie, the protagonist. For some reason that I'll never know, Davis or his producer decided that since all of these novels are based in Boston, he should have a Boston accent. He didn't do this in any of the other novels. Davis's Boston accent drifts in and out, and even occasionally sounds British.

The choice to change the narration from what was done in the previous five books in this series, to this bizarre attempt at a Boston accent was a terrible choice. I don't know who's at fault, but the book was unlistenable. I'll be returning it. I'd rather just read it now.

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5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Endurance

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

Not particularly

What didn’t you like about Jonathan Davis’s performance?

Contrary to a previous reviewers remarks, I did not like the Boston accent - attempted Boston accent. Another issue, but a big one is that Massachusetts town names are notoriously difficult to pronounce correctly based on spelling alone. Mr Davis falls into the typical pitfalls. What I don;t get about the accent is that he didn;t attempt to do the accent in previous novels. Why now?

Other than the accent I like Davis's performance.

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

No. Nothing happens - all conversation and narration.

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5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

Decent storyline; distracting narrator

Lehane is one of the best in the genre; this is NOT the best of his works. The plot was a bit contrived and all of the characters except for Patrick and Angela were not fleshed out sufficiently.
The narrator was trying--I think---to produce a Boston accent, but it wasn't consistent and often he sounded British rather than 'Southie'. As a Boston native, I found this distracting.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

Lehane phone home

Apparently, Dennis Lehane's publisher or the publishing contract put tremendous pressure and a deadline on him to write a final Kenzie and Gennaro (or a sequel to "Gone, Baby, Gone" and whatever happened to Amanda McCready). I cannot help but believe, based on the fine quality of the prior Kenzie/Gennaro novels that Mr. Lehane’s heart just wasn't in it and he had to just phone one in. The tale feels like it was spun by a story-structure program, with a flimsy plot, new characters with no development, no true sense of place, Boston or Berkshires, present in the prior books, and relatively little humor.

SPOILER: You could tell from the thin threads of plot starting, going and ending nowhere like the relationship between Sophie and her idiot dad (themselves stick characters), the confusing and baseless relationship between Amanda and her counselor Dre', the expedient railroading of Dre’ and an entire plot line, followed almost immediately by an implausible climax in a trailer park on the Charles River.

Even the narrator, Jonathan Davis, tried a little too hard on this one in parts and was otherwise inconsistent in adopting the Boston "r"'s.

I still look forward to other Lehane novels.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Clever Revisit

Odd small inconsistencies among the characters here and past Kenzie and Gennaros. But I don't agree with those who found this so disappointing. I like it that the characters have grown in a decade... No evolved. Like it that they tied together the ends from the past. Definitely felt closure and an end to an extended multi novel epic.

Only one BUT.... don't start with Moonlight MIle. Begin this series from the beginning. It is so cleverly and richly constructed that you'll cheat yourself of a great deal of pleasure if you don't drive this path from its start.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Smart, asks and answers some tough questions.

What made the experience of listening to Moonlight Mile the most enjoyable?

You've gotten to know and care about the main characters, and Lehane writes about not only what they do but why, and that makes this series so good.

What other book might you compare Moonlight Mile to and why?

The Ian Rankin Rebus series is very different, the culture in particular, but the struggle of a moral person to do the right thing is similar.

Which character – as performed by Jonathan Davis – was your favorite?

Patrick Kenzie

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