Product Description

The electrifying sequel to Darkness, Take My Hand.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #20079 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-01
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Dennis Lehane won a Shamus Award for A Drink Before the War, his first book about working-class Boston detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro. His second in the series, Darkness, Take My Hand, got the kind of high octane reviews that careers are made of. Now Lehane not only survives the dreaded third-book curse, he beats it to death with a stick. Sacred is a dark and dangerous updating of Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, as dying billionaire Trevor Stone hires Kenzie and Gennaro to find his daughter, Desiree. Patrick's mentor, a wonderfully devious detective named Jay Becker, has already disappeared in St Petersburg, Florida, while working the case, so the two head there to pick up a trail. Desiree, of course, is nothing like the sweet and simple beauty described by her father, and even Chandler would have been amazed by the plot twists that Lehane manages to keep coming.

Synopsis
Dying billionaire, Trevor Stone hires private detectives, Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro to find his missing daughter. Grief-stricken over the death of her mother and the impending death of her father, Desiree Stone has been missing for three weeks. So has the first investigator, Trevor Stone hired to find her: Jay Becker, Patrick's mentor. As Patrick and Angie begin their search, they are led down a trail of half-truths and corruption into a world in which a therapeutic organization may be fronting for a dangerous cult; a hi-tech private investigation firm may be covering up lethal crimes; and a stolen cache of millions in illegal funds may be tied to both disappearances and a tanker full of heroin. Nothing is remotely what it seems as the detectives travel from the wind-blown streets of Boston to the rum-punch sunsets of Florida's Gulf Coast and back again, searching for a woman and a man who could be saints or sinners, victims or victimizers, alive or dead. And the more Patrick and Angie discover, the more they realize that on this case, any wrong step will certainly be their last.

From the Back Cover
`DARKLY COMIC AND ELECTRIFYINGLY PACED'Maxim Jakubowski, Time Out

Griefstricken over the accidental death of her mother and the impending death of her father, Desiree Stone has been missing for three weeks - and so has the first investigator her father hired to look for her. And when the dying billionaire hires Boston detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro to continue the search for his missing daughter, they find that nothing is remotely what it seems.

Travelling from the windblown streets of Boston to the rum-punch sunsets of Florida's Gulf Coast and back again, they search for a woman and a man who could be saints or sinners, victims or victimizers, alive or dead.And the more Patrick and Angie discover, as they are led down a trail of half-truths and corruption into a dark and terrifying world, the more they realize that on this case, any wrong step will certainly be their last.

`AS SMART AND FAST A CONTEMPORARY CRIME NOVEL AS YOU COULD WISH FOR' GQ

Customer Reviews

mystic river
I picked up mystic river by chance, absolutely loved it and ordered all he has written. Enjoyed everyone of them! BRILLIANT!

Full of Twists and Turns
Private Investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro are back. They've closed their office, because of what happened in the last book ("Darkness Take My Hand") and are adamant about not taking on any more cases. At least for a while. But dying billionaire Trevor Stone has different ideas. He has the pair kidnapped, so that they're forced to listen to his proposal. They don't want to, but he offers them twenty grand just to hear what he has to say. Then he tells them about how his darling daughter, who turns out not to be so darling after all, has gone missing in Florida. He's sent PI Jay Becker after her, the man who taught Patrick the biz, but he's vanished as well.

This book takes us out of the seamier side of Boston and isn't as dark as Lehane's last two novels. Though this one is a little lighter in tone, it's still full of the twists and turns we've come to expect from Lehane and, like his last two books, this one too is worth every one of those five stars.

Review submitted by Captain Katie Osborne

When is the film being made?
This is a great crime thriller which is just begging to be made into a Hollywood blockbuster. The story has a twist at every corner and the characters are believeable enough for you to care but not so sentimental that they distract from the action. I was actually disappointed when the final big twist was revealed as it was obvious the book was coming to an end. This was my first Lehane novel but after this I would definitely hunt him out for a fantastic holiday read.