A Drink Before the War audiobook

Dennis Lehane - from Boston Magazine A noir touch, complete with nifty madcap dialogue and a dark sense of humor makes this a fun detective tale. It begins when two politicians come to PI Patrick Kenzie and employ him and partner Angela Gennaro to retrieve some documents purloined by a cleaning woman. What follows is a large scale gang-war between two of the most notorious lowlifes in Boston, two who share a surprising connection. Depravity, turf, shame, revenge all figure in this dark tale of embarrassing pleasures and public corruption. The PIs are the target of multiple murder attempts, with the usual result, damage but not of a terminal nature. A cast of supporting characters gives this tale a rich ambience, a black columnist, old-time cops, a too-well-armed psycho who happens to be on the side of the angels. Race in Boston is also given considerable attention. This is an excellent book in the tradition of Chandler. It made me eager to read more.=============================EXTRA STUFFLinks to the author’s personal, Twitter and FB pagesOther books by Lehane I have read/reviewedKenzie and Gennaro-----Darkness, Take My Hand-----Sacred-----Gone, Baby Gone-----Prayers for Rain-----Moonlight MileThe Coughlin Series-----The Given Day-----Live by Night-----World Gone ByRead, but not Reviewed -----Mystic River - a masterpiece-----Shutter Island - not

Before he wrote Mystic River, Shutter Island or was part of the crime novelist dream team that worked with David Simon on The Wire, Dennis Lehane was just another writer trying to establish a private eye series. Of course, they’d end up being some of the best books of their kind because Lehane is just that damn good.Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro have been friends since their childhood growing up in a blue collar Boston neighborhood and now they’re partners in a detective agency. They’re more than a little in love with each other, but Angie is married and loyal to a man who abuses her regularly. Patrick is baffled by how the strong-willed and tough-as-nails Angie is willing to be a punching bag for this asshat, but his efforts to try and stop it have only made matters worse. Plus, Patrick has his own issues in dealing with his background as a physically abused child at the hands of his father, a hero firefighter. So their relationship is a bit…complex.Patrick and Angela are hired by some local politicians to track down documents they claim were stolen out of a state senator’s office by a cleaning woman. The woman has vanished, and the pols are desperate to get their documents back. What should be a routine job quickly turns bloody, and Patrick and Angela become the targets of both sides of a massive gang war.But since this is a series with smart-mouthed, gun-toting PI’s, there’s got to be a bad-ass friend they can turn to. Spenser has Hawk. Elvis Cole has Joe Pike. And Patrick and Angela have Bubba Rogowski, ‘a lovable sociopath’ with a talent for mayhem and a hatred for everyone in the world except Patrick and Angela. Bubba is the kind of guy that when you ask him for a couple of guns, he'll also provide some hand grenades. Because you never know when a good grenade might come in handy...A quick plot summary and the Bubba character make it seem as if this just another unrealistic PI series. (We all know that there aren’t really any private detectives who go around shooting people with friends who supply them with grenades.) In fact, the first chapter almost seems like the Boston-born Lehane is doing a straight rip-off of Robert B. Parker’s Spenser series. It’s a first person story told from Patrick’s point-of-view, and he meets the clients at the bar in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, a favorite Spenser watering hole. He also delights in throwing out smart ass comments to tweak his employers, just as Spenser does. However, as the story progresses, it gets much richer and deeper in characterization and themes than most PI series. Race plays a huge part in this story, and Lehane allows his heroes have some less than politically correct thoughts regarding racial issues. There’s a lot of violence, and Patrick and Angie can play the tough smart-ass when need be, but privately, they show the physical and emotional toll it takes on them. These aren’t larger than life action heroes who can shoot their way out of any problem, these are real people struggling to do the right thing in impossible circumstances and there are no easy answers.It looked like Lehane might have been done with Patrick and Angie’s story after the fifth novel, when he went on to do his stand-alone novels, but he’s finally delivering us a new P&A book later this year. Woo-hoo!

"L.A. burns, and so many other cities smolder, waiting for the hose that will flood gasoline over the coals, and we listen to politicians who fuel our hate and our narrow views and tell us it's simply a matter of getting back to basics while they sit in their beachfront properties and listen to the surf so they won't have to hear the screams of the drowning." ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 1/4 Initial Thoughts Although I'd never read Dennis Lehane before, he was someone I was well aware of from sensational movies like Mystic River, Shutter Island and Gone Baby Gone. Wanting to try something I'd never experienced before I decided to tackle one of his earliest novels, the first book in his critically acclaimed Kenzie and Gennaro series, a drink before the war. A winner of the Shamus Award in 1994 no less. I had good feelings going into this one. The Story Set in the early 1990's, two Boston politicians are offering big money for a seemingly routine job. Private detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro are on the hunt for a missing cleaning lady, who stole some documents from one of the aforementioned politicians. Sounds simple, but obviously this wouldn't be a story if that were the case.The city is on the verge of all out gang warfare and as the plot thickens everything seems to tie in with the job in hand. As the pair get closer to the truth they have to enter a dark and dangerous world where one false move can get you iced. It's all very taut, tense and edge of your knickers stuff. The Writing Lehane is obviously a talented guy when it comes to slinging ink at a page. His writing is smooth and compulsive with a real sense of humour that captures the mood and social dynamics of the time. After a fairly slow start, the story really picks up and soon becomes a real page-turner. "People died last summer. Most of them innocent. Some more guilty than others. And people killed last summer. None of them innocent. I know. I was one of them." Lehane has a real sense of humour and adopts an often sarcastic tone with his characters that I really enjoyed. There's some really dark and dastardly themes and subject matter in this and the way he mixes it up is fantastic.Something that really impressed me was the way he brought to life the location of working-class Boston and the social dynamics that existed at the time. It's clear that Lehane is writing what he knows and I really had a clear picture of the environment and all its shady corners and dark alleys. The Characters A Drink Before the War grabbed top marks for the character work with detective duo Kenzie and Gennaro really growing on me through the course of the story. Kenzie narrates the story, and it's from his point of view for the majority. I really took to his witty sense of dark humour and self-deprecating attitude and as someone working in law enforcement it struck a chord with me. It really helped to balance some of the nasty business that he was involved in.Angela Gennaro is a perfect balance for him. A tough cookie, who adopts a more serious approach, she is on the ball with everything accept her personal relationship with an abusive husband. There's always an awkward sexual tension between her and Kenzie, which adds an interesting dynamic to the story. But they do make a fantastic pair and I'd love to share a beer with the pair of them. “Maybe that’s what love is counting the bandages until someone says, ‘Enough.’“ But Lehane doesn't stop there and brings some fantastic secondary characters to the party. I really appreciated the way he added different facets to each and none of them were one-dimensional. This is real human beings with real flaws, that helped convince me that I was reading about actual people. Final Thoughts This for me is crime noire at it’s best. This being the first in a six book series of Kenzie and Gennaro, I'll certainly be reading more. Next up is Darkness Take My Hand and that's supposed to be even better! But there's a host of other books by Lehane that I've now got my eye on. He certainly could be my go to author when I fancy a bit of detective fiction or a good mystery. And as they say in Boston...cheers!Dennis Lehane

Came across this series when looking for some good crime fiction (which is not cooked up by ghost writers and doesn't bear a name of James Patterson on its cover) to bind me over until the next Tana French's and Gillian Flynn's releases. I think I am going to stick with it.The main characters of this series are Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro, Boston PIs. In A Drink Before the War they get hired by an influential state senator to locate a woman who, according to him, stole some sensitive documents while performing her janitorial duties. Naturally, the task is not as easy as it seems at first. The documents manage to put the investigators' lives in an immediate danger and start a war between two local gangs. Kenzie and Gennaro have to work very hard to get out of this bind and stay alive. At first I didn't care for the story too much, particularly for the narrator - Patrick Kenzie. I don't read much fiction written from male POV and his grated on me for awhile. He was just too cocky and tried too hard to be witty. No, thank you. But later on, as the shit hit the fan, people started dying left and right, the most appalling atrocities came to light and there was no time to joke around any more, I liked it much more. I liked the portrayal of Boston. The city became almost one of the main characters in the novel, like Dublin did in Tana French's thrillers. I liked how Lehane wrote about racial tensions in his city, how frank he was about them. It was interesting to see that racism takes a completely different tone in Boston than, let's say in South.(The Southern type of racism I am more familiar with.) But the most I liked that the challenges that the PIs had to face were so morally ambiguous.The only thing I ended up scratching my head over was the fact that Kenzie and Gannaro managed to get away with a lot of illegal stuff in this book. I am talking about murders, assaults and carrying unlicensed guns around. Do PIs in general do whatever the feel like without any consequences?

Action-packed, philosophical and written with wit. A lot of good material in 320 pages.

*3.5 Stars* Once that ugliness has been forced into you, it becomes part of your blood, dilutes it, races through your heart and back out again, staining everything as it goes. The ugliness never goes away, never comes out, no matter what you do. Anyone who thinks otherwise is naive. There have been so many books I've read and fallen in love with, lately. I'd love to say I'm just that good at picking out books and taking extraordinary leaps to try new and exciting genres and different authors...but that's rarely the case. Yes, I have gotten so picky nowadays that I don't generally find many stinkers...but I don't usually take many risks. But I guess that's what I can count on one of my best friends and co-bloggers for-In the last year, I can attribute about, hmm, 80% of my favorite/absolute favorites to an adventurous alien named Anna. She takes risks I never would have had the guts to go through with, ie I Hunt Killers, This is Not a Test, Pines, etc. As you can see, she is my proverbial guinea pig, if you will. I looked at the grenades. Didn't have a clue what to do with them. I had the feeling that if I left the house, they'd roll off the bed, take out the entire building. I picked them up, gingerly, and put them in the fridge. Anyone broke in to steal my beer, they'd know I meant business. My point in saying all this, if you haven't guessed, is that she has helped me find some amazing books that I never would have tried. And with this gift, I have began to really expand my horizons, to really open my eyes wider to greater, grander stories. Do you realize how nice it is, how very very nice, to not be pigeon-holed to one genre? I LITERALLY go through moods and mercurial spurts for months on end where I don't know what the fuck I'll be in the mood to read. Meaning, it could be three months of fantasy, and then, inexplicably, all of a sudden I just HAVE to try a contemporary, or a dystopian (when done right, still my favorite), or a paranormal or whatever I feel like, really. I never have a clue, month-to-month, day-to-day, what I will want to read. That's why, when in the mood, I hurry to devour the very genre I'm obsessed with because I have no clue-literally none-when I will be in the mood for it again. Vanity and dishonesty may be vices, but they're also the first forms of protection I ever knew. As it is-I'm obsessed with tortured boys and thrillers right now. It kind of goes hand in hand that I'm so obsessed with this genre, though. What's not to love about peril, mystery, and young men who are ambiguous in character and tortured within? Whoops. Did I say that out loud....Yes, okay, I'm a sick little weirdo-get over it! You know this, if you read any of my reviews. I love flawed characters that long for a better life, for the girl they can't have, etc. etc. I don't know, call me crazy, but I just can't seem to get enough of these types of books. I'd been a punching bag for my father for eighteen years, and I'd never hit back. I kept believing, kept telling myself, it'll change; he'll get better. It's hard to close the door on optimistic expectations when you love someone. I guess, even if just briefly, I need to talk about the book and it's characters right? Patrick...boy have I heard a lot about this Patrick ;). He and Angie, his partner....okay. Never mind. I don't know how to do this!! I ran my hands through my hair, felt the grit and oil from the last day, smelled the trash and waste on my fingers. At that moment, I truly hated the world and everything in it. They get cases. They investigate crimes. They turn the people in when they find them (to their clients). Patrick has been in love with Angie since the third grade. Angie is married to an asshole. Patrick doesn't like the asshole....so he puts him in his place, every now and then, in sensible ways with sensible objects....sensibly. L.A. burns, and so many other cities smolder, waiting for the hose that will flood gasoline over the coals, and we listen to politicians who fuel our hate and our narrow views and tell us it's simply a matter of getting back to basics while they sit in their beachfront properties and listen to the surf so they won't have to hear the screams of the drowning. In this story, they are hired by real top-of-the-class types who have lost some documents after the maid up and left with them. What was supposed to be a simple case turns out to be deeper, scarier, more deathly than they ever could have imagined. And it is only opening them up to what I'm sure will be a very exciting series. My gun is, as Angie would say, "not a fuck-around thing." It's a .44 magnum automatic-an "automag," they call it gleefully in Soldier of Fortune and like publications-and I didn't purchase it out of penis envy or Eastwood envy or because I wanted to own the goddamned biggest gun on the block. I bought it for one simple reason: I'm a lousy shot. Bahaha this is all I thought about- I wish I had gotten more time to read this because I know I ruined many parts because I was so tired. I would pick up the book, totally excited, and then only get 10% done when I would start to nod off-seriously, my puppy is psycho. And I'm not so stupid as to think this book was boring-it wasn't. I would just be getting somewhere, something happening, and then BAM-my eyes started to close. Ugh. ARGHHH! So aggravating. So, a 3.5, I think, is fair. I can't say for sure it wouldn't have been higher or lower...but, from what I read, I liked that I felt deeply...and everyone knows I go based on feelings. I got good vibes from this one. I looked at Angie again. I wasn't worried about her; I was considering what would happen to my business if my partner shot the dicks off a barful of people in Lansington. I wasn't sure, but I didn't think we'd be able to keep that office in the church. All in all a wonderful addition to add to my list of ever-growing Anna wins. I only hope the series continues to grow on me. I hear great things about this wonderful cast of complex and flawed characters, making me excited to dig deeper into their world. I'm 10% into book two, and I already have a 5 star sitting pretty and ready to go...I figure it couldn't get any lower, right?? RIGHT?! Sigh. Guess I'll see! Angie once said, "Maybe that's what love is-counting the bandages until someone says, 'Enough.'"Maybe so. For more of my reviews, please visit: ****************Didn't even read the blurb.Don't need to because Anna said....Patrick.K.

'Some people, you either kill them or leave them be, because you’ll never change their minds.' A drink before the war is the outstanding first book  in the Kenzie and Gennaro series and I've gotta say this is a completely absorbing crime thriller that explores racial divides, political power plays, abuse in a sickening form, gang wars and a distinctly profound lack of goodness in people. Private Investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro are hired by big guns Senator Sterling Mulkern and Senator Brian Paulson to find some important paperwork apparently stolen by a cleaning lady from Paulsons office. Now missing the hunt is on. I look back at my notes while writing this review and I'm struck by the quality of the writing, the delightful prose all coupled with a plot that ratchets the tension exponentially. The characters are deeply fleshed out, their lives away from the main story are as gripping as the twists and turns that comprise the main event. Kenzie is a man with a sense of humour that his beautiful partner doesn’t always share and he’s also deeply in love with her. She knows but is trapped in a relationship with an abusive husband that she won’t give up on. 'Unfathomable terror swam in his irises, and I could tell his brain was scrambling to get past it, searching his soul for the courage necessary to achieve resignation.' I underlined that many passages of quotes and the like that I enjoyed, that there's just too many to include. So I've peppered a couple through the review just to give you an idea of why this guy's stuff is just top notch. 'Vanity is a weakness. I know this. It’s a shallow dependence on the exterior self, on how one looks instead of what one is.' If you’ve not tried this series yet then you really need to, the detectives get into more and more trouble as the investigation progresses, pretty soon their lives are in danger but a really serious problem is somehow mixed with little gems of humour that add so much to the story and characters. Highly recommended and I will definitely be reading more from Lehane soon. Also posted at http://paulnelson.booklikes.com/post/...

A Drink Before the War was my first Dennis Lehane book and an excellent start to the Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro series. The only thing I wondered was, why the hell did it take me so long before reading this book? I liked Patrick and Angie, I didn't like Phil, Angie's husband and wondered how long before she would get rid of him. But there was one person beside the detective duo that I liked; Bubba. I have a bit of fondness for one person armies! The case was interesting and seemed to be a simple one, just retrieve some documents. But as usual when it comes to the duo (as I came to learn reading more books about them) it never is that easy and soon they are up to their ears in trouble... This is a great first book that I warmly recommend anyone that likes crime books to read!

This book had both the makings of greatness and potential disaster for me. For one, high-marks in gritty detectivery (not a real word) from a trusted source or two had me going in with high expectations. Then there are the elements of the story itself. A guy/girl PI duo, Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro, could make for tension-laced banter (see Archer and Lana for the spyland ideal), but I'm not a fan of romance when it encroaches on the territory of my mystery plots. Likewise, the geographical setting is one I know well, Boston (it even has a shoutout, albeit an ignominious one, to my home town of Marblehead toward the end). When done right, I love reading about places I know and Lehane has done Boston oh so well in the past (e.g. The Given Day). However, I can also be easily distracted by anything anatopistic (yes, I had to look that word up, anatopism is to space as anachronism is to time). So how did it go? Well, as you might have guessed from the stars (review stars, not astromancy), pretty darn well. Dennis Lehane leverages two of Boston's notorious institutions, dirty politics and bad race relations, into a story that breathes into the world around it. It speaks to my own willful blindness to the well-being of bigotry in the world around me that I had trouble figuring out the time period during which the story takes place (musical references to Lou Reed, and U2 had me off by a few decades before Lehane dropped in mentions of Urban Outfitters, Store 24 and the now closed Filene's store landed me somewhere near the time of the book's publication in the early 90s- corrections welcome!) Long of the short, consider me signed up for the next one.