Prayers For Rain by Dennis Lehane

The book opens simply. A beautiful woman named Karen Nichols hires private investigator Patrick Kenzie to deal with a stalker. He and his buddy Bubba take care of a guy in a way that no 20th century mystery publisher would have allowed depicted for a novel's "good" guy.Case closed, until she calls him for help months later. He's too busy to answer the phone, however, and forgets her until she jumps off Cambridge Tower.In the grand tradition of Philip Marlowe who somehow eked out a living by righting wrongs rather than tracking down deadbeats, Kenzie goes after the subtle but brutal mind of whoever is behind Karen's death.What follows is a modern, dark hardboiled mystery thriller that keeps surprising us until the end. Along the way is plenty of action, as well as social commentary, to keep us on our toes.There are details to dispute. Bubba may be more traveled than people think from meeting him, but I don't believe anybody -- even Hezbollah, let alone an American Marine -- co
uld use popsickles to construction a model of Beirut that included an alley the official mapmakers missed. Besides, how could Kenzie know the alley was there?More seriously, Bubba is portrayed as at home in combat -- but the US Marines in Beirut in 1982 weren't fighting a war there. They didn't go on combat operations. If got combat experience, it would have had to be in Special Forces operations -- but this was never even hinted at.If Lehane wanted Bubba to be an actual combat he should have been old enough to fight in Vietnam or young enough to have fought in the Gulf War. If he had to be in the military in the early 80s, Lehane should have put him in Nicaragua leading the contras against the Sandinistas.Another detail that's an obvious error somebody should have caught before the book went to print: the bad guy grew up in a military family, and among the places he lived in as a child is listed North Korea.Sorry, but we don't have military bases in NORTH Korea. That's the
enemy half of Korea. We do have bases in SOUTH Korea. That's what Lehane meant, and somebody should have caught that.Maybe it was just me, but Lehane sometimes slows down the action for his characters to have a love life. I felt like a little boy in a movie theater who wants more action instead. "Yuck, he's kissing her."None of his romantic interludes past or present move the plot. Maybe I'll care more after I've read all the books about this character, but this is the first one. Hey, the James Bond books mix in plenty of sex, but usually it's a Russian spy and part of the overall plot.And maybe I'm dense, but I never quite understood how the bad guys recruited their allies. And why didn't they try to interrogate poor Miles in the hospital. Sure, he couldn't talk or write, but he could shake his head yes or no.However, none of that is to diminish the high impact this book has. The bad guys are wonderfully smart and evil. Highly recommended.

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