Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane read by Jonathan Davis (with a limping Boston accent)
1235 12399 1234
First create a pattern. A pattern creates an expectation. Then, disappoint the expectation. So Lehane gives us a prostitute who turns into a decoy who turns into a very pretty woman who wants to take her detective-investigator boss to a hotel room, and does. But she is his wife.
Lehane’s title is from a Rolling Stones song, and his investigator is aging. He does piecemeal work for a 100 year old security firm that doesn’t advertise and into which he doesn’t fit. The investigator has a chip on his shoulder called class struggle.
The investigator used to be bad and rich; now he and his wife are good, but in debt. They miss being bad. They have a daughter.
6/1:23 ”After my daughter was born I considered buying a shotgun to ward off suitors 14 years or so up the road. Now a I listen to these girls babble and imagined Gabby one day talking with the same banality and ignorance of the English language I considered buying a shot gun to blow my own fuckin head off.”
