There's lots of excitement surrounding Moonlight Mile due to hit the streets in early November. I was thrilled to get a galley from Harper Collins. I deliberately set aside some time this past weekend to settle in and enjoy. Lehane hasn't written a book in the Kenzie and Gennaro series since Prayers for Rain (1999). In Moonlight Mile, the detective partners are back in full swing. If you remember the excellent Gone Baby Gone, the fourth in the series, you'll remember that Kenzie's mission that time round was to find a kidnapped child, four year old Amanda McCready. Amanda was the daughter of a no-good mother and in the end the story leaves the readers with a moral vs. a legal dilemma. Gone Baby Gone's ending caused lots of debate, including a very heated one in my family. Seems Lehane must have also wondered about his ending as in Moonlight Mile, Amanda, now 16, goes missing and her Aunt Beatrice seeks Kenzie's help in finding her yet again. The question he left us with so many years ago gets a second opportunity to be explored and explained.

Moonlight Mile is a fast paced, very satisfying read and all Lehane. The dialog is snappy and Kenzie and Gennaro, now parents themselves, continue to banter back and forth, argue a bit, retain some tension, but are beautifully loving just the same. Supporting characters are quite interesting and I just love the reappearance of Bubba, the couple's fiercely loyal, hulk of a friend who can take on any criminal, including the Russian Mafia. Moonlight Mile does contain a healthy dose of violence but somehow this manages not to be the focus of the story.

All this said, the Kenzie/Gennaro series is like eating dessert before the main course for me. I did enjoy Moonlight Mile and it was delicious. Still, I really prefer Lehane's stand alone novels, especially The Given Day, a superior book IMO.