We are going to do something a little different this year at our Barry Awards presentation during the Opening Ceremonies on Thursday, September 8th. Two-time Barry Award winner (for GONE, BABY GONE and MYSTIC RIVER) Dennis Lehane has graciously agreed to present the Barry Award for Best Novel during the Barry Award Ceremony.
I’ve gotten a little bit nostalgic thinking about this. Back in 1994, when Dennis’ first book, A DRINK BEFORE THE WAR, came out, he attended the short-lived Eyecon, a convention that celebrated the private eye novel that was the brainchild of Gary Warren Niebuhr. As a newbie to mystery conventions, I think Dennis was shocked that a number of us had already read his first novel — and liked it — a lot. Over the years I’ve always enjoyed my encounters with him. One year, after the convention, while waiting for my plane to take me home, I ran into Dennis on the airport concourse and we talked for about 15-20 minutes. When I got back to my gate, I discovered that everyone had boarded and that I nearly missed my flight. But it was Dennis Lehane — and it would have been worth missing a flight.
Recently, Dennis has been heavily involved in the Apple TV+ production of Black Bird, a crime series about a criminal in prison who is offered a reduced sentence if he will agree to transfer to a super-max prison and be the cell-mate of a serial killer. His mission is to find out where the bodies are buried.
His next book, SMALL MERCIES is scheduled to be published in April of 2023. It will have been a six-year gap between this one and his last in 2017.
Plot of SMALL MERCIES.
In the summer of 1974 a heatwave blankets Boston and Mary Pat Fennessey is trying to stay one step ahead of the bill collectors. Mary Pat has lived her entire life in the housing projects of “Southie,” the Irish American enclave that stubbornly adheres to old tradition and stands proudly apart.
One night Mary Pat’s teenage daughter Jules stays out late and doesn’t come home. That same evening, a young Black man is found dead, struck by a subway train under mysterious circumstances.
The two events seem unconnected. But Mary Pat, propelled by a desperate search for her missing daughter, begins turning over stones best left untouched—asking questions that bother Marty Butler, chieftain of the Irish mob, and the men who work for him, men who don’t take kindly to any threat to their business.
Set against the hot, tumultuous months when the city’s desegregation of its public schools exploded in violence, SMALL MERCIES is a superb thriller, a brutal depiction of criminality and power, and an unflinching portrait of the dark heart of American racism.