Dennis Lehane to revive Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro series with Gone, Baby, Gone sequel

Colette Bancroft begins her October 25, 2009 St. Petersburg Times article, "Author Dennis Lehane brings back popular characters from 'Gone, Baby, Gone'" by  announcing, "Patrick Kenzie is talking to Dennis Lehane again."  Patrick Kenzie is, of course, one of the two main characters in Lehane's short-lived Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro detective series (1994-1999), a series that Lehane has recently announced he plans to revive. He is currently penning a sequel to its fourth title, Gone, Baby, Gone (1998).

Dennis Lehane at a book signing at Borders in London's
Charing Cross Road. (Creative Commons Attribution
Share Alike licensed photo by Garry Knight)

What a difference a year makes! In a September 4, 2008 USA Today interview with with Bob Minzesheimer Lehane was still explaining his decision to end the popular series. The books "were written from a young man's perspective," Lehane said. "I left Patrick when I was 33 and he was 33. I've tried, but his voice won't come."

The author and his character reestablished communication, Bancroft reveals, just as Lehane was completing his publicity tour for his most recent novel, A Given Day. "I was in a cab leaving an airport," Lehane says, "I don't even remember which one, and he started talking to me."

Lehane credits the deliberately ambiguous conclusion of Gone, Baby. Gone – a novel about the kidnapping of four-year-old Amanda McCready – as the stimulus for reviving his interest in the series. In his still untitled sequel to that work, which Lehane expects to be published in 2010, Amanda is a teenager and has gone missing once more. Patrick Kenzie, now 44, is drawn into the case.

“I thought I would never write about them again,” said Lehane of his series characters in an October 5, 2009 Boston Herald article. “Then all of a sudden I thought, what would it be like if a girl walked back into your life that was part of the most guilt-inducing decision you had ever made.”

Dennis Lehane's current reputation is based largely on his recent standalone novels, beginning with the 2001 title, Mystic River, and followed by Shutter Island (2003) and The Given Day (2008). But Lehane began his career as a novelist with the Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro series, books in which his two private investigators work out of an office located in the belfry of a church in Boston's blue collar Dorchester area. The series consisted of only five titles – A Drink before the War (1994),  Darkness, Take My Hand (1996), Sacred (1997), Gone, Baby, Gone (1998) and Prayers for Rain (1999).

Ben Affleck directed the 2007  film version of Gone, Baby, Gone in which his brother, Casey Affleck, starred as Patrick Kenzie. The YouTube video below is the trailer for that film.