GENRE: Mystery / Private Investigator
PUBLISHED: Harper, 2007 (1998)
WHY THIS NOVEL: I liked Shutter Island and wanted to read another novel by Lehane + this was on sale for a bargain price
The back blurb:
The tough neighborhood of Dorchester is no place for the innocent or the weak. A territory defined by hard heds and even harder luck, its streets are littered with the detritus of broken families, hearts, dreams. Now, one of its youngest is missing. Private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro don’t want the case. But after pleas from the child’s aunt, they open an investigation that will ultimately risk everything – their relationship, their sanity, and even their lives – to find a little girl lost.”
I found it a bit difficult to write about this novel. First, it’s the fourth novel with PI Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro and I didn’t read the ones before; and second, I don’t read a lot of PI novels (or mystery in general) so I don’t know how it compares. What I can say is that I think it’s a good written novel, I liked the dialogue and police bits and although it’s clear that all characters are good at what they do, it’s not sure if they can find the girl. It’s a gritty novel that’s not afraid to show the dark side of things. It’s also a novel told in first person by Patrick Kenzie (worked rather well, I thought) and it’s a novel I skimmed paragraphs.
The story begins “innocently” enough – a child is missing. But soon it turns into something more, it’s a kidnapping, it’s a power struggle in a criminal organization, there are drugs involved and all kinds of other things come into play. The missing child seems just a coincidence and not really connected with what follows. All and everything seems a dead end, so in that way the story is all over the place. Patrick and Angela (and the police) don’t know what to make of it. All they know for certain is: “The missing girl remains missing or at the bottom of a quarry.” A few months later, it’s just Angela who’s still looking for something they missed. And in April the next year, another child is missing, and although it is not really related to the first missing child, this case leads Patrick on the right track and all the dead ends come together.
Gone, Baby, Gone is a story about moral ambiguity and Lehane writes about a subject that gives a sickening look into human nature: child abduction and all it’s implications. Lehane doesn’t shy away from the ugliness there and sometimes, it’s not easy to read. Unfortunately, sometimes it’s also too clear that it’s a subject that’s important to Lehane and that he has a point to make because it’s then I thought the story a bit plodding and heavy-handed. But Lehane’s point leads to a really gut-wrenching end and demands an answer to the question “What is the right thing to do?” In this story, there are two answers and for Patrick and Angela, answering the question means life is no longer what it was before they took the case. I don’t know if the way they answer is in keeping with the characterization established in the other novels but it worked for the point Lehane wanted to make.
I wondered about two things that happened: one is related to the final twist that puts Patrick and Angela on the right track but it happens right at the start of the novel. When I read it, it was a huh?-moment and niggled at me all through the story. The other one is something the one who’s behind it all does and it’s what gets him arrested in the end. That one I just thought a silly and unbelievable move. But again, great for the point Lehane wants to make.
On the whole, I thought Gone, Baby, Gone could have been written a little bit tighter. There are a few parts that seemed slightly unnecessary, for example the thing that needs to happen so that Patrick gets his clue, and the focus on getting a point across was too strong for my tastes. But there also were a few intriguing references to other cases, Kenzie’s and Gennaro’s relationship seems interesting, I liked Lehane’s way to write and that he isn’t afraid to show “grittiness,” so I’ll probably read one of the other Kenzie/Gennaro novels.
Would I recommend this novel? Yes.
Would I read this novel again? Probably not.
Grade: 4 – / 5
Books and Games 
TBR Challenge: “The Interpretation Of Murder” By Jed Rubenfeld
21 OctInfo: TBR Challenge 2009
Theme for the month: horror
In my TBR pile since: January 2007
Genre: thriller
Published: Headline Review, 2007 (2006)
Availability: still available
Monthly theme?: No, except if you want to count how bad a lot of the characters in this novel are…
Why I bought this novel: I thought the blurb and the play with history it promised interesting.
I’m not much into mysteries/crime novels/thrillers. I think it’s because I’m more drawn to internal conflict than external conflict and – rightly or wrongly – I see mysteries as being mostly about external conflict. But now and then I read a blurb and think “this might work for me.” That’s how I ended up with The Interpretation of Murder. I also liked the fact that it plays with history, that some of the story’s characters are based on people who really lived.
The Interpretation of Murder is narrated by two narrators. First, there is the first person narrator Stratham Younger. He’s a physician and a Freudian although he has his problems with the Oedipus complex. He teaches at Clark university and meets Freud as a representative of Clark university. Younger is rather young, in awe of Freud, had (still has) problems with his recently deceased father, and is looking for the solution to Shakespeare’s Hamlet, in particular Hamlet’s soliloquy that begins “To be or not to be…”. The second narrator is an omniscient narrator. This narrator lets the reader be part of the murder investigation, led by coroner Hugel and Detective Littlemore, and all kinds of other sub-plots.
In the beginning, I thought the many characters offered a kaleidoscopic view on the events. It was like a big puzzle and with each character you would get a new piece of it. There were twist and turns and they certainly made the novel seem fast-paced.
But soon, this started to get too much. There were more and more characters, the plots multiplied, and the twists and turns turned more fanciful. There was the main plot, trying to solve the murder. This was linked to Younger who tried to recover Nora’s memory. Then there was the plot to discredit Freud and his theory, Jung, who accompanied Freud, acted strange and stranger, and red herrings appeared left and right. All this was served with Younger’s thoughts on Freud’s Oedipus complex and Hamlet’s “To be” soliloquy and passages about New York’s buildings and society. What started as a story that tried to find a murderer with different means, police investigation and psychoanalysis, very soon turned into a story that relied mostly on action (I actually could picture some of its scene in a movie).
Freud’s psychoanalytic theories were more a gimmick than a real means to solve the murder. Psychoanalysis helped explain what motivated the murderer but that was nearly all the role it played. What’s more, Freud was a mere gimmick. His involvement in the case was practically nil, he as good as disappeared for long passages in the later part of the novel (when the action starts) and if this story wanted to give an answer to why Freud so strongly disliked America, I’m not really sure what it is.
In general, the characters were rather one-dimensional and the constant shift of focus, and focusing on some characters only late in the story, didn’t help to make me care or draw me in. Sadly, the mystery couldn’t make up for my lack of investment. The longer the story progressed, the more convoluted it all became, leading up to a resolution that, after all was said and done and characters were arrested, took two characters talking about it at length to convey what really had happened.
I liked the passages about New York. The research done there clearly shows. And although they sometimes sounded a bit textbook-like, I actually liked the psychoanalytical passages, Younger’s take on the Oedipus complex, and Younger’s thoughts about Hamlet. The novel is somewhat a page turner with all that is happening but overall, I think this story tried to do too much at the same time.
The things I liked should be the extra bonus in a story. In The Interpretation of Murder, they actually were the only things I thought (at least somewhat) interesting. The foundation, the story’s elements, were not developed enough to come together. Too many sub-plots, too many characters, too many shifts of focus, they all made the mystery even more convoluted than it already was on its own. Nobody and nothing is what he/she/it seems at first in this story (if you’re wondering, here’s the connection to Younger’s thoughts about Hamlet) just as Freud is not really part of this story, despite what the blurb leads one to believe.
Verdict: The longer I think about this novel, the worse my opinion gets. 3/5 for now, going for 2,5/5.
Tags: Jed Rubenfeld, mystery