Review

This is a tale of love and loss, murder and mystery, racial conflict, obsession and revenge, and more. The story recalls the power of Shakesperean drama and unfolds with character driven pace, surprises and foreboding. Author Dennis Lehane (Mystic River) is a master novelist and writer of acclaimed films and television series. Small Mercies is Lehane at his best. This novel is about two different but related stories, one on a grand scale and one focused on a mother and her daughter in the vortex of the larger story. The context is the 1974 Court ordered school busing program in the poorest sections of Boston which required half of the students at the all-black Roxbury neighborhood high school to be bussed to attend the all-white South Boston ("Southie") high school. Half of the Southie high school students were ordered to be bussed to attend Roxbury High School. These two neighborhoods were so separated and tribal that it was highly unusual and often dangerous for a resident of one neighborhood to enter the other. The story is set in Southie as the busing mandate is about to be affected. Southie reacts with anger and hate against the blacks of Roxbury, the Judge and the middle- and upper-class whites who live in suburbs far from the inner city and far from any busing or racial conflict. Lehane evokes the life and culture of Southie, which is mainly poor Irish, clannish, and insular. The district is controlled by a gang led by a powerful figure modeled on the infamous Boston criminal Whitey Bulger. The mob's power derives from its corruption of politicians, judges, law enforcement and an FBI mole, all of which is very credible to anyone who knows the Boston of the 1970s. Southie is a place of the working poor, and housing projects. Families are broken by fathers in prison for crimes, large and small or by divorce, drugs, and alcohol. The women of Southie are strong and among them is Mary Pat Fennessy, the central character of the novel. When her beloved 17-year-old daughter disappears, Mary Pat does not accept her fate. She is a remarkable character, brimming with street smarts, courage, wry humor, and vengeance. An empathetic police detective is another excellent character from Lehane's pen as are many other denizens of Southie. The story develops on many levels. The busing project shows the unintended consequences of social engineering. The story of Mary Pat and her daughter shows what can go wrong when a victim of the corrupt Southie crime bosses turns on them. Small Mercies is a captivating, literate, non-stop thriller with substance and insight.

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