“Sacred” Leaves Boston—And Lehane's Comfort Zone—Behind In An Uneven Effort

“Angie was where most of me began and all of me ended.”

In this installment of Dennis Lehane's Patrick Kenzie-Angie Genarro series (the third, to be exact), we follow the dynamic detective duo's work with a dying father and his irresistible sexpot of a daughter (defined by the Shakespeare quote, “The ornament of beauty is suspect”). "Sacred" is probably the weakest of the Lehane books I've read, the most sentimental and emotional, which is concretely revealed to be not within Lehane's wheelhouse of strengths.

For the first time, Lehane moves the scene outside of Beantown, trading in his customary gritty depiction of Boston for the Florida beaches. Always-beautiful, sometimes-seedy Tampa Bay emerges as another character in the book, melding nicely with the super-charged firecracker that is Desiree Stone (“‘My toes spun, man. And like, all’s I can say is, well, she should have a ride named after her at Epcot. You know?’”). Straying out of Boston proper unquestionably brings Lehane out of his comfort zone, but it was an unavoidable and inevitable twist handled well by a seasoned writer.

Lehane delves somewhat too deeply into the Angie and Patrick dynamic in this one, with their budding, erotic relationship becoming a bit too fairy-tale-like. I suspect the author realized this and immediately began working on putting up borders for the next book. "Sacred" becomes a little too much of a love story, not just a mystery or a thriller. Yet there's no question that Lehane simply has a way of knitting a story and drawing you in for an entertaining, quick read.

The ending was somewhat disappointing and awkward in its overly dramatic nature (Shakespeare's sonnets, really)? Pitting father vs. daughter in a death battle of guns and wills was a bit much to take, and then out of nowhere Patrick and Angie decide to take a trip to Maine together. Are we supposed to believe that this is the beginning—or continuation—of a non-work partnership? Is Lehane asking us to suspend all the trauma this pair has seen and accept that they're going to give the couple thing a legitimate shot?

"Sacred" undoubtedly falls far short of Lehane's best work, but it perhaps represents an exploratory, slightly immature stage in his development as a writer. Yet even at his most questionable, Lehane proves once again to be among the most readable and alluring storytellers of his generation and genre.