Mystic River is Lehane's sixth novel set in a vividly drawn working class Boston neighborhood and peopled by gritty Irish and Italian immigrants. The first five novels, however, are more traditional mysteries, featuring detective partners Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro, whose complicated emotional relationship adds the only break from fast-paced action. The Kenzie-Gennaro series includes A Drink Before the War (winner of the Shamus Award for Best First Novel); Darkness, Take My Hand; Sacred; Gone, Baby, Gone; and Prayers for Rain.

Although the pace is much faster and the action more outlandish in the detective series than in this much slower-paced psychological analysis, Lehane does touch on some of the scenes and themes he explores in depth in Mystic River.

In Darkness, Take My Hand, Patrick recovers a memory of a pivotal childhood incident in which he and a best friend are lured into a car...