It’s the summer of 1974 and, as the desegregation of Boston’s public schools is about to take place, a young black man is murdered one night by a group of white kids. As police begin tracking down and interviewing the white kids, one of them - Jules Fennessy - remains missing. Jules’ ma, Mary Pat, begins her own search for her daughter and for the truth of what really happened that night.
Dennis Lehane is a fantastic writer who’s written some cracking novels (Shutter Island, Moonlight Mile, Since We Fell) but unfortunately his latest, Small Mercies, isn’t up there among them. It’s a very slow-moving narrative with sporadic bursts of excitement and revelations that are underwhelming and unremarkable.
The first half of the novel is a well-written but nonetheless dreary trudge through repetitive story details, dull historical table-setting and character introductions (most of whom aren’t that memorable). It doesn’t live up to the “thriller” label until Mary Pat realises what’s what and goes off on one. Like most female characters from Southie in a Lehane novel (quite a few of his books are set in this part of America), Mary Pat’s a tough broad and it’s entertaining to see her go to town on the scum that make up her corner of the world.
Those passages are short-lived though and then we’re back to the dry police procedural and waiting-around that make up most of the novel. Lehane’s explanation of Boston racism isn’t that profound or enlightening either (generational prejudice hammered in at a young age - duh).
I usually like Lehane’s novels so Small Mercies was a disappointingly boring read and I would warn any fans of the writer planning on checking this one out not to get your hopes up. If you’ve not read him before and would like to, I’d start with Shutter Island or Moonlight Mile instead of this much weaker, forgettable effort.
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