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Here is some of the best character-driven fiction I have ever read. Now at the end of 2023, I may be changing my choice for "best of the year" to Dennis Lehane's SMALL MERCIES.

Background: the summer of 1974 in the housing projects of (Lehane's favorite) Boston, Southie to be exact. Everyone's upset about the new bussing plan, that many Irish Americans will be forced to go to schools in black neighborhoods and that many blacks will be forced into schools in their neighborhoods. This background is true.

The story: Mary Pat Fennessy's 17-year-old daughter, Jules, goes missing after meeting with friends one evening. So Mary Pat looks for her, and she's not afraid of anyone. As time goes by and we learn along with Mary Pat what has probably become of Jules, we see how tough Mary Pat can be. And she's just beginning.

During her search, Mary Pat learns of the death, maybe accidental, maybe not, of her black coworker's 20-year-old son. Little by little, she hears about Jules' possible involvement.

Working this case of possible murder is Homicide Detective "Bobby" Coyne. Separately, he and Mary Pat both come to know what really happened. They each are examples of a parent's love for their child. And she is an example of a mother's vengeance.

SMALL MERCIES is great character-driven fiction in part because it also has plot. Plus, I've read few authors who can write a character-driven story as well as Dennis Lehane.

Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane is a very highly recommended, brutal crime thriller set in 1974 Boston during a time of racial tension over school busing. Another excellent novel that is now on my list of the best novels of the year.

Mary Pat Fennessey lives in the projects of the Irish American section of Boston called “Southie.” It's 1974 during a time of social unrest after the courts have ordered busing to desegregate schools. Mary Pat isn't as concerned over that as much as she is over the fact that Jules, her seventeen-year-old daughter, hasn't come home after a night out with friends. As she begins asking questions and searching for her daughter, she learns that a young Black man is found dead after apparently being struck by a subway train. As Mary Pat begins to ask questions, Jules friends claim she was walking home around Midnight, but it also is clear that they are hiding something. What follows is a story of a mother's revenge, violence, Irish mobs, and hate.

As a tough as nails Southie, Mary Pat was raised to fight back. She uses all her instinctive intelligence, building maternal rage, and street fighting instincts while looking for Jules and extracting revenge against those involved. She is not a likable character, but she is portrayed as a fully realized complicated person who has nothing left to lose. She already lost her son to heroin. All she had left was her daughter and she will risk everything for the answers she seeks.

Homicide officer Bobby Coyne is on the case, but his investigation reaches a stand-still. Then, after Mary Pat takes matters into her own hands, he can only stand back and follow the results of her action. During this same time, tensions are rising and it appears violence might break out in the neighborhood over the integration of their schools.

Small Mercies is a gripping, realistic, and complex novel that is filled with tension and violence in a realistic setting. The pace is fast and many of the details are tragic. As expected from all Lehane novels, the writing is excellent. It is impossible to put Small Mercies down once you start it.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of HarperCollins via Edelweiss.

The latest novel from Dennis Lehane arrives unexpectedly.

Therefore, receiving Small Mercies comes as a shock, but what a shock. I postulate that this is his most vibrant work, a truly exciting, engaging and enraging narrative. There is an echo of Mystic River, the beautiful though dark novel that was shortlisted in 2010, as the greatest crime-novel of the decade via Deadly Pleasures Magazine’s Barry Award narrowly missing out to Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo at Bouchercon San Francisco.

Small Mercies like Mystic River is a historical crime thriller set in the Irish working-class neighborhood of South Boston. The backdrop is the desegregation of the public school system by busing high school students from poor Black Neighborhoods, into poor White Neighborhoods, and vice versa. It should be noted that this desegregation initiative was restricted to the public school system, not the affluent neighborhoods where privately funded education was the norm.

The story is propelled by the vividly realized character of Mary Pat, a tough middle-aged single working-class Irish Woman.

Widowed: her former husband ‘Dukie’ was a small-time burglar connected to the local Mob Boss, Marty Butler.

Separated: her second husband Kenny Fey left her because he could no longer tolerate ‘the hate’.

Devastated: she lost her son Noel, an ex-Vietnam GI who died tragically from a Drug Overdose.

And finally, there’s Jules: Her teenage daughter about to find herself in a former all-White High School, where half the student body will be bused out to a Black High School – and taking their place will come Black Pupils.

When Mary Pat finds herself involved in the protest movement against the desegregation / busing initiative, her beloved daughter Jules vanishes. The disappearance coincides with the death of Auggie Augustus Williamson - a black youth, at a train station on the white-side of town.

As Mary Pat grows more anxious about her missing daughter, the local mobster Marty Butler and his henchmen at the pub The Fields of Athenry agree to help her. But before you can mutter ‘Gone, Baby, Gone’, their assistance takes on another meaning, perhaps a differing significance.

A tangled web of tribalism, ignorance and a sense of belonging and community take on a darker edge – one of fear that transforms into unbridled hate. An underground ‘Black Power’ liberation group is acquiring weapons, as dividing lines separate communities by skin colour. Each of these communities are equally poor, and controlled equally by the wealthy and the criminal – where money and power overlook skin colour.

Lehane’s ear for dialogue and emotion is incisive so all the characters come alive by deft turns of phrase and mannerism. There is wit that keeps the novel’s dark tragedy and violence from overpowering the reader.

Historical detail is realised with an uncommon vibrancy. Clipped short chapters are not written but carved, so there is not one superfluous word. Lehane has considered every sentence, so apart from the thrilling and urgency of the propulsive narrative – the reader is prompted unconsciously into deep thought. The reader’s own moral compass is tested, almost as if the ink that stains the words has been magnetised. Despite the dilemmas facing the characters and readers, this highly literate novel is as fast paced as ricocheting bullets off concrete.

The dénouement is staggering, for the reader is bereft when the pages run out, for the story continues in the mind – remaining like an echo, the ranting of an inmate from sHuTteR iSlaNd.

This is Dennis Lehane at the height of his writing powers; for to miss this novel would be unforgivable.