Book 1

A Drink Before the War

by Dennis Lehane

Published 1 November 1994

Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro are tough private investigators who know the blue-collar neighbourhoods and ghettos of Boston's Dorchester section as only natives can. Working out of an old church belfry, Kenzie and Gennaro take on a seemingly simple assignment for a prominent politician: to uncover the whereabouts of Jenna Angeline, a black cleaning woman who has allegedly stolen confidential Statehouse documents.
But finding Jenna proves easy compared to staying alive. The investigation escalates, uncovering a web of corruption extending from bombed-out ghetto streets to the highest levels of state government.

With slick, hip dialogue and a lyrical narrative pocked by explosions of violence, A Drink Before the War confronts a city in which institutionalized bigotry and corruption are often the norm, and the true nature of 'racial incidents' is rarely clear. Dennis Lehane's remarkable debut is at once a pulsating crime thriller and a mirror of our world, one in which the worst human horrors are found closest to home, and the most vicious obscenities are committed in the name of love.


Book 2

Darkness, Take My Hand

by Dennis Lehane

Published 12 July 1996
When wisecracking detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro agree to protect the son of a prominent psychiatrist who believes she may have angered the Boston Irish Mafia, they soon find bodies are piling up around them seemingly unconnected with their case. And what's more all the clues point to an unlikely suspect a serial killer who has been in prison for twenty years, so he can't be killing again, can he? As Angie and Patrick try to find out what kind of human being could perform such horrifying acts of rape, mutilation, torture and dismemberment, they discover that the killer's motive is disturbingly rooted in their own distant past. In a series of heart-stopping climaxes that grow ever more terrifying and bloody, the two work frantically with the Boston cops, the FBI, the local Mafia, and the folks from their old neighbourhood to unearth the killer before they become victims themselves.

Book 3

Sacred

by Dennis Lehane

Published 23 July 1997
The Boston private eyes, Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro, are hired by a dying billionaire to find his missing daughter who has been grieving the murder of her mother. The trail leads them to a religious cult in Florida and more murders.

Book 4

Gone, Baby, Gone

by Dennis Lehane

Published 22 July 1998
Boston private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro are hired to find four-year-old Amanda Cready. Despite extensive news coverage and dogged investigation into her abduction, the police have uncovered nothing. And as the Indian summer fades, Amanda McCready stays gone - vanished so completely that she seems never to have existed. Then a second child disappears. Confronted with a police force seething with lethal secrets, Kenzie and Gennaro soon discover that those who go looking for the missing may not come back alive.

Book 5

Prayers for Rain

by Dennis Lehane

Published 19 May 1999
In a dangerous battle of wits Kenzie and Gennaro track down a killer whose insidious murder weapon isn't a gun or a knife but instead the merciless psychological manipulation of his victims until despair finally drives his targets to kill themselves.

Book 6

Moonlight Mile

by Dennis Lehane

Published 2 November 2010

Sixteen-year-old Amanda McCready has disappeared. Her anxious aunt contacts Patrick Kenzie to investigate. It is not the first time she has gone missing, as Patrick well knows - he was the investigator who worked on her case when she was kidnapped before, as a four-year-old.

But this is not a simple case of a runaway girl. In fact, nothing in Amanda's life has been simple: brought up by the world's worst mother, neglected throughout her childhood, she has nonetheless blossomed into a formidably intelligent young woman. A young woman so bright that she can seemingly out-think and out-manoeuvre anyone...

For Patrick, the case leads him down Boston's darkest, most dangerous streets - and into a world of shocking secrets that will threaten not only Amanda's life, but also his own and that of his partner Angie Gennaro.


Book 6