Rating: 
Summary: Dark and Distrubing
Review:
Darkness, Take My Hand is no lightweight crime novel. It is tense, emotionally draining and frightening. Detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro are put through so much mental and physical punishment that at times the book is hard to read because it is so unrelenting. The villains are extremely bad and some of the murders that are committed are horrific.
The characters and their relationships really make this book. Patrick and Angela are so likeable, despite all the rubbish in their lives and their messed up pasts. To a certain extent they have the most dysfunctional lives I have ever read about. Both of them are divorced (Angie from a wife beater and Patrick from Angie?s sister), both of them are in love with each other but aren?t prepared to show it, both of them use commonplace sex as a replacement for other things in their lives, and so on. Their relationship is further complicated by a new love in Patrick?s life ? Grace and her young daughter Mae. As in the first novel in this series, the parts where Patrick looks back to his childhood and thinks about his father and his and Angie?s relationship back then were especially poignant and had me in tears.
The plot for this book was rather too gruesome and scary for me. There were too many horrible murders and threatening characters. A lot of the events that happened were tragic and made me feel quite depressed. Put it this way, I don?t think I?ll feel up to reading the next novel in the series for at least a month or two. I need time to recuperate first!
Overall this is a good thriller which is fast paced and emotional. I recommend it to those who can stand violence and gruesome murders because these take up a large part of the book. The highlight for me was the relationship between Patrick and Angie ? I wanted to force them to get together. Still, maybe it will happen for them in the third book in the series?
JoAnne
Rating:
Summary: Weird
Review: Ok, this is a very well-written book, for the most part. It's a real page-turner with interesting characters (too bad most of them die off within about a page of being introduced). The characters are very well-developed though, most of them at least. For instance, the one that stands out the most is Angie's ex-husband Phil (ex because he beat her). Phil is a very old friend of the narrator Patrick Kenzie and his partner Angie and you learn more about him as a person rather than as a cliche. You rarely ever see this. But at the same time, he didn't seem all that real to me. He was unique, an individual. But I wonder if Lehane tried to make him so uncliche that he made him unbelievable. The plot moves along with interesting twists, the only problems is there are times when Lehane falls into the poor prose trap of mystery novels, with lines so laughable they must be intentional considering the brilliance of the other 2/3 of the book. Perhaps it is meant to be amusingly exploitative, who knows? But other than that, great book.
Rating: 
Summary: Clearly Five Stars!!
Review: I do not hand out many 5 star ratings. They should be reserved for books of unusual stature like TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD or FIFTH BUSINESS. But Lehane has written a dark and horrific masterpiece. He is indeed a deep and thoughtful author. Every mood and emotion is pitch perfect. Lehane has created not just memorable characters that give short term excitement, but rich compelling characters that speak to universal experiences. Lehane makes us think as we read, which is no easy task in popular fiction. Themes of honor, betrayal,fear, and vengeance are explored in an uncomfortable way. (and thats a good thing) To see how far a 'hero' will go for the greater good is indeed interesting and our hero does questionable things before he sees what the darkness will require of him. This a must read.
Rating:
Summary: Another Great Lehane Mystery
Review: I am totally caught up in the series. These books have a lot of great suspense, action and mystery. The only negative is, these books have a lot of violence and sensitive subjects like ones dealing with child abuse. I really like the way Lehane has developed the characters of Angie and Patrick. This book had a lot of developments in their relationship. Can't wait to read the next one.
Rating:
Summary: Dark, gritty, horific, brilliant
Review: This is my third Lehane book, and I continue to be astounded each time I read him. Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro take on the case of a shrink who believes her son is being threatened by an Irish street gang. But it becomes clear that this has nothing to do with gangs, but everything to do with an extremely violent serial killer. What's even more frightening is that this killer has targeted Patrick and Angie, and their respective loved ones. Worst of all, the killer has some connection to their childhood that Patrick doesn't begin to understand, and the killer may not be working alone. Lehane's strength is that he doesn't make it easy to make moral pronouncements. The characters act and react based on needs and emotion (often rage)--they don't have the luxury of always doing the moral thing as prescribed by society. But, Patrick and Angie are still beautifully human and wonderfully sympathetic, even as they do the "wrong" thing, for both the right and the wrong reasons. They really want to be good people, but know they aren't quite there. At the core of there relationship is a fraternal love that never quite moves away from it's less platonic overtones. Lehane beautifully blends exciting action with suspense and meditations on the human condition. This isn't a nice world that our heroes live in. It's an ugly, violent world, where unfortunately, they help perpetuate that violence. Lehane makes you keep turning the page, even though you know bad things are probably going to happen. I am looking forward to reading the rest in the series, as well as Shutter Island.
Rating: 
Summary: Bad copy of Thomas Harris ..
Review: Well it seems like my last review was not published for whatever reason so I'll try again. I found this book a BIG disappointment after Shutter Island and Mystic River. It seems like DL set out to write a Thomas Harris style thriller without realising that one of the strengths of say SOTL is the contrast between the cool dedicated professionalism of the crime fighters contrasted to the erratic violence of the psychopath. When you make your 'good guys' just as violent and uncontrolled as the bad guys you are kind of missing the point. DL should have also bourne in mind that it's a mistake to make your hero and heroine wise-cracking detectives if
a) you can't write any wise-cracking dialogue for them;
b) they are so slow that the reader is usually several pages ahead of them - so why are they detectives at all? Characters like Bubba and the various gangsters introduced belong in a comic rather than a serious novel and by overloading us with evil killers the few truly menacing moments lose the impact they should have had. Also surely I'm not the only one sick to death of the man/woman detective team with the 'will they won't they' relationship (Mulder and Scully were bad enough). However the book DOES show talent and certainly remains engrossing right to the end (though if I had known what the ending was like I probably wouldn't have bothered). I really hope he has left this sort of immature parody in the past and goes on to write more books like Shutter Island.
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