Monday Mystery Backlist - A DRINK BEFORE THE WAR

There has been a lot of talk about the fact that Dennis Lehane's new book will be a Patrick Kenzie/Angie Gennaro novel. So, since we haven't featured Dennis Lehane in the Monday Mystery Backlist posts yet, I thought this might be a good week to go back and visit the very first book in this series, A DRINK BEFORE THE WAR.

In Lehane's debut novel, detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro take on a case to retrieve stolen documents for some politicians. The documents were stolen by the ex-wife of a gang leader, which winds them right in the middle of the gang's cross hairs. When Patrick and Angie are able to locate the documents, which don't turn out to be "documents" at all, they find themselves not only stuck between the politicians and the gang members, but in possession of evidence of child abuse.

As becomes Lehane's signature, A DRINK BEFORE THE WAR is complex, dark, controversial and thrilling. The Mystery News was quoted as saying (about A DRINK BEFORE THE WAR):

"Lehane does everything well, but what he does best are characters and prose. Kenzie and Gennaro are beautifully crafted protagonists. They have depth, and they come alive on the page."

The Shamus-award winning novel put Lehane on the crime fiction map. If you have not read the books in this series, A DRINK BEFORE THE WAR, is the perfect place to start.

A DRINK BEFORE THE WAR was originally published in hardcover (ISBN: 978-0151000937) by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 1994. Among a slew of versions, HarperTorch published a mass market paperback (ISBN: 978-0380726233) in 1996 and a trade paper publication was also released by Harvest Books in 2003 (ISBN: 978-0156029022).