Gone Baby Gone by Dennis Lehane

5 Stars

 

“Even if MY world is okay, THE world is still a pile of evil shit.”


(Wrong movie - spot-on quote. Also, doesn’t Matt Damon have the most punchable face in all the world? The correct answer is yes. Yes he does.)

This was a buddy read with my pal The Jeff, but I can’t wait any longer for his slow ass to finish so my review is going up now ; )

In all seriousness, words can’t express how thankful I am that I buddied up with The Jeff for this one. Let’s just say I wasn’t in a real good place this past week so there was no way I could have made it through without adding some levity via status updates with my pal.

Gone Baby Gone is the fourth installment in the Kenzie & Gennaro series and covers the investigation of a 4-year old little girl who has gone missing in Dorchester. Man this book was dark. It’s a story that won’t just break your heart, it might break your entire being. It will most definitely tear your blood pumper into ten thousand pieces, douse those pieces with gasoline, and light the match.

I’ve never read a book where I already knew the whodunit before even beginning. However, since Gone Baby Gone was a feature film starring the incomparable Morgan Freeman about 8 or so years ago, I was already familiar with the story. That being said, Lehane’s writing is so stellar that even though I totally knew how things would play out I still found myself . . .



and questioning whether my memory was correct.

Speaking of the wring . . .

“Nothing is louder than the silence of the missing child. It’s a silence that’s two and a half to three feet tall, and you feel it at your hip and hear it rising up from the floorboards, shouting to you from corners and crevices and the emotionless face of a doll left on the floor by the bed. It’s a silence that’s different from the one left at funerals and wakes. The silence of the dead carries with it a sense of finality; it’s a silence you know you must get used to. But the silence of a missing child is not something you want to get used to; you refuse to accept it, and so it screams at you.

The silence of the dead says, Goodbye.

The silence of the missing says, Find me.”

Excuse me for a second . . .



With regard to the movie version if you’ve not yet seen it, let me tell you it’s one of the best adaptations from page to screen I’ve seen (even the miscasting of certain characters worked well). And while I don’t find Battfleck as punchable as Matt Damon, I’m not a huge fan of his acting inability. However, as a director of a gritty crime drama set in Southie???? Amazing. The film also happens to feature one of the most quotable quotes in the history of movies and one that I use around my house on the regular . . . .


(Don’t you wish you were married to me? Yeah, Jeff does too.)

I’m obviously not going to tell you who the bad guy is, any twists and turns, or how things play out. All I’m going to say is some people shouldn’t ever be allowed to birth children . . .



Drugs are bad mmmmm’kay . . .



Don’t EVER f*&^ around with people named things like “Cheese” . . .



And when things seem a little far-fetched or too hinky, just go with it and be prepared for a read that makes you question everything a lot of the opinions you hold about what is right and what is wrong. Also be prepared to . . .