SMALL MERCIES by Dennis Lehane

Set on the eve of the desegregation of Boston's public schools in the 1970's, a woman from Southie, an ex-addict cop, and the Irish mob collide after a young white girl goes missing and a black man is found dead at a train station, setting fire to an already lit match of racial unrest in the city. 

"We're not built for princesses down here."

It feels like it's been a while since I've read a novel by Lehane, one of my favorites. And everything here is all that you expect from a master crime writer. The man has such a strong command of his art form at this point. Not only is this a great time capsule documenting this tense time in Boston (and American) history, but it's also a fantastic portrait of these two lead characters. 

Mary Pat Fennessy is finally confronted with how stuck she and her community have been in their ways, how malignant her environment can be, and how she has to reckon with how this toxicity could have tragically spilled into her daughter. And in contrast, Detective Bobby Coyness has grown up in the same way but somehow managed to keep on the right path, even though it's an everyday struggle to keep his morality and his sobriety. 

He considers the possibility that maybe the opposite of hate is not love. It's hope. Because hate takes years to build, but hope can come sliding around the corner when you're not even looking.

Although this didn't have the raw power like some of his best novels have, this is still a great book, with its focus on the struggle to not allow hatred to be passed down from generation to generation.

GRADE: B+