Small Mercies, by Dennis Lehane.

 

It is Summer, 1974.  In Boston, Massachusetts, a judge has just decreed that public high schools be desegregated:  black teenagers will travel by bus to white high schools – but only in the poorer areas.  Prosperous suburbs with private schools will be exempt.  In the predominantly poor Irish district of Southie racism is rearing its ugly head:  if the rich want desegregation, let them bus all the niggers to their own schools!  The mood is ugly, and there have already been demonstrations, engineered by the local criminals;  they don’t want competition from any nigger gangs on their turf.  The atmosphere is explosive, and the weather is not helping.  Everyone is feeling the heat, not least the mayor, the judicial system, and the police:  something will have to give.

Mary Pat Fennessy is a hard woman – hard-faced, hard to like, and hard-done-by in her personal circumstances:  her first husband, father of her children and a small-time criminal, died in suspicious circumstances;  her beloved son succumbed to heroin’s charms and died as a result;  her second husband Ken has recently left her, and her cherished remaining child, 17 year-old Jules, didn’t come home last night. And a young black man has been found dead overnight in Southie, too, and the police are making a lot of enquires.

 Jules’ mutton-headed boyfriend Rum says that he hasn’t seen her and left her to walk home by herself.  Oh, really?  Rum is unprepared for Mary Pat’s ‘physicality’ when Mary Pat tracks him down, for Mary Pat is a dirty fighter whose main advantage is surprise – surprise and shock that a little woman could turn herself into a bone-breaker, and in Rum’s case, a testicle-cutter – not fatal, you understand, but so painful and bloody that Rum begs the investigating police to keep him in a cell so that she can’t get him – and in return he’ll tell them what he and Jules did on their last date.

Dennis Lehane doesn’t let the reader move an inch away from the page as he holds us all in a stranglehold of suspense, first as to Jules’ fate, then the nature of Mary Pat’s terrible revenge.  And hubble-bubbling away like a dirty underground stream throughout this explosive and powerful story is the racism that never goes away, never changes, and certainly never disappears, even though fifty years have passed.  This was a hard book to read, (including all the f-bombs!) hard because of all the uncomfortable truths that it exposes, especially about how we, as children, are taught to hate:  this is a great book.  SIX STARS.   

 

After That Night, by Karin Slaughter.

 

I’ve done it again:  started reading a series at the end instead of the beginning, to my eternal shame.  Ms Slaughter’s latest book is advertised as a Will Trent thriller and I thought ‘no problem – there will be a backstory’.  And there is, but so many Will Trent novels have preceded this one, with so many truly great permanent characters, that I spent most of the time while I read trying to figure out relationships, friendships and families, and my lasting regret is that I’ve missed out (unless I trawl through the Will Trent Canon, and will I live that long?) on a continuing story that embodies perfectly the thriller genre.  Even though I’m lacking in previous details, especially concerning Will Trent’s early life, I’m so fortunate to finally meet him.  Better late than never!

            GBI special agent Will Trent is engaged to Sara Linton, a brilliant Doctor who is working in the Emergency Department of an Atlanta hospital.  They are planning their wedding in a month’s time and both are thrilled to be starting their new life together, until a young woman is brought into the E.D. in terrible condition.  She has driven a late-model Mercedes very gently into an ambulance parked outside the hospital, then collapsed.  Her injuries are horrific and eventually fatal despite everyone’s efforts, but it is also obvious that she has been brutally raped.  Which awakens terrible memories for Sara:  fifteen years ago, the same terrible, animal thing happened to her, and after that night, nothing in her life would ever be the same, including injuries so bad she can never have children.

            But that’s not all.  An investigation turns up cold cases, rapes and fatalities that remain unsolved, all involving young women of approximately the same age, usually students – with the same knife-markings on certain  parts of their bodies – and always missing a left shoe:  the cases are all connected, but actual evidence is thin on the ground, until Sara and Will piece together fragile clues linking her assault and the dying girl with the Mercedes, all linking however tenuously to a group of her fellow medical students, now prosperous specialists, trailblazers in medicine and powerful men in their own right – but spectacular failures in their personal lives.  They took the Hippocratic Oath:  they pledged to do no harm.  They couldn’t be mixed up in this sadistic cruelty:  could they?

            Ms Slaughter leads us competently through the story, never letting the reader up on the suspense and examining sometimes minutely the sacrifices that people (particularly parents) will make for those they love – and those they don’t:  think medical staff and police.  As always she gives us HEAPS to think about – and regret:  wish I’d read all the backstories!  FIVE STARS.