In the following essay, Dunn visits the south Boston neighborhoods on which Mystic River's fictional Buckingham is based to learn about Lehane's impetus to write and how his experiences in those neighborhoods inspire his fiction.

Dennis Lehane did not want to work for Boston Gas. Nor did he want to work for Boston Edison or the post office. He had no ambitions to enter the priesthood or politics. Instead, he wanted to write. His parents (who emigrated to Boston from Ireland in the 1940s) were duly horrified.

Fortunately, Ann and Michael Lehane's son seems to have made the right decision. Mystic River, his sixth novel, finds the author transcending the genre label of crime novelist that his earlier books have earned him, placing him at the intersection of crime and literary fiction. Mystic River is a mystery novel that pushes up out of the genre, a book...