Dennis Lehane (Dorchester, Massachusetts, 1965) punished us with seven years of waiting, but once we read Coup de Grace we forgive him. His new novel is a wonderful example of what happens when the needs of the genre (plot tension, entertainment, the desire to tell and read) come together with literary talent and the gaze on what the creator wants to look at (in this case, racism, violence, family relationships…).
With Coup de Grace we return to Boston territory, year 1974 from the neighborhood of Southie, as poor as it is Irish. Preamble to the riots that occurred following the decision of Judge Wendell Arthur Garrity Jr., forcing the exchange of black and white schoolchildren between the different public schools in the city. With this backdrop, Lehane introduces us to Mary Pat Fennessy, a nursing home caretaker, who lives alone with her daughter, in a council flat, and to whom life has been hard, but who does not care. They have taught that one can give up. Her teenage daughter goes out to party and doesn’t come back. Mary Pat searches and questions until she is aware that she has to face the neighborhood mafia.
The disappearance of a son, his possible murder, the enigma, gives the character of Mary Pat a vengeful violence that we only allow in a woman and mother who may have killed her daughter – after losing a son to an overdose. post Vietnam-. Superlative and highly recommended novel for any type of reader, with an ending of too many shots, but it is Lehane and we forgive him.
We are so accustomed to the books of Llort (Barcelona, ??1966), that perhaps we are not aware that you are one of the best writers of the genre in Catalan, regardless of time and generation. Here, he places us before a mirror to show us the normality of a vocational murderer, without trauma or remorse.
Another author who always gives the right time is Mrs. Oates, (Lockport, New York, 1938), who, on this occasion, opts for a short edition – 285 pages – of a narrative where the suspense and completion of the murder of a sister, Twenty years after it happened, it reflects the puzzle, with shadows and lights.
Ferrari (Buenos Aires, 1972) proposes a path of those left by his previous novel delivery That look like flies from afar, to continue hypnotizing with the harboiled dance steps while the world around him decomposes and stinks.
