Dennis Lehane Returns to Kenzie & Gennaro – With a GONE, BABY GONE Sequel
The mystery community’s known for roughly a year that Dennis Lehane’s current work-in-progress was a return to the universe of his series characters, Boston-area private detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro. But the Boston Herald’s Gayle Fee and Laura Reposa report that the book (“due next summer or early fall”) is not just a return for the duo, but an outright sequel to his 1998 novel GONE, BABY GONE (made into the 2007 film directed by Ben Affleck):
the future. His next book is a sequel to his 1999 best-seller “Gone,
Baby, Gone,” and is set 11 years after detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro’s toughest case.
“I thought I would never write about them again,” Lehane told the Track .
“Then all of a sudden I thought, what would it be like if a girl walked
back into your life that was part of the most guilt-inducing decision
you had ever made.”
“It’s 11 years later, and that same girl goes missing again. And now
he’s gotta find her again,” he said. “Initially he doesn’t want to, but
then he finds himself chasing this part of the past that almost
destroyed him and every relationship he’s ever had. It’s something he
never made peace with.”
“That same girl”, of course, is Amanda McReady, who would be 15 in this new book. (For some reason the Herald reports McReady’s return in a separate paragraph, curiously neglecting to connect the dots to Lehane’s quote in the above section.) And even though Kenzie & Gennaro will age in real-time to being in their 40s, Lehane is keeping mum on everything else about them, to Fee and Reposa’s chagrin: “Are they married? Estranged? Facebook friends??? “I can’t tell you,” [Lehane] said. “You gotta read the book. I want my 25 bucks!”