The genre is nominally a he/she private eye relationship. As the novel opens Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennero are estranged, but developing circumstances force them to resume their professional collaboration. Their locale is a vividly portrayed Boston, but could easily be exchanged for another city's ethnic neighborhoods.

Patrick's sidekick Bubba has a very strange nom de guerre for a Bostonian, but in many ways he is the show stealer. At first glance he is a semi-retarded brute, but incrementally the reader can glimpse raw brilliance, creativity, and passionate mores spawned in a violent society. Bubba has the skills each of us covets. He has a bold, animalistic force and a live-for-the-moment tactical genius.

Patrick and Bubba perform a minor intimidation for a young woman with perfect penmanship, diction, and manners. Within months the unsullied woman becomes the unholy. She precipitously declines into drugs, prostitution, and a shamefully exhibitionistic death.

Patrick is shocked, intrigued, and existentially offended. Their brief, casual relationship had etched an icon of perfection that is now shattered. An evil force has systematically flayed the woman's psyche until her persona ceased existence. Why? How? Eventually, who? Patrick is unable to relinquish the memory. With substantial unearned guilt, Patrick initiates a quest to right the wrong.

The plot of Prayers for Rain is both straightforward and intricate. The in-your-face style of Kenzie is echoed in the brash dialogue and bone crunching visualizations. There are no literary gimmicks; this story unfolds in a straightforward chronological manner with evil building while virtually every character's flaws become exposed. The final crescendo is no disappointment. While some evil is merely evil, the depraved events of this novel have defined motivators.

This novel is a detective story; it is also a well-written, serious work. If you haven't sampled Dennis Lehane's work, this is an excellent place to begin.

--Steve Nemmers