It would be easy for Lehane to paint Mary Pat as an empathetic figure while she searches for her daughter, particularly in the middle of such profound social tumult, the city of Boston teeming with aggression. Where Jimmy was the semi-retired king of the streets, a man respected and feared by locals and law enforcement alike, Mary Pat is a middle-aged woman who has begun to feel invisible, who has literally had to fight for everything in her life and who, with her daughter missing, must learn to walk “without falling down.” Luckily, time and memory have turned her into a resourceful woman, one who is “most ecstatic when she’s been wronged.” If this rings somewhat familiar, it’s because it’s the same essential plot turn Lehane used in “ Mystic River,” when Jimmy Marcus goes looking for the killer of his teenage daughter, though in this case the power dynamic is reversed. Turns out, Mary Pat is pretty good with her hands.

Which means Mary Pat needs to take justice in her own hands. Problem is, Marty Butler and his crew are leading the fight against desegregation - a clear nod to notorious gangster Whitey Bulger’s role in the actual conflict - and have no time and even less desire to help Mary Pat. And for good reason: Rum and George both are connected to Butler, and dropping their names at the precinct could be a death sentence. Under normal circumstances, a person would go to the cops if their daughter was missing, but Mary Pat plays by the rules of the neighborhood, opting instead to go to the Irish mob family run by Marty Butler. She wishes for a better life for her daughter, just not in a better place. That those things have eroded into a microcosmic world fraught with addiction, violence and overt racism don’t seem to bother Mary Pat. Jules’ question goes unanswered, Mary Pat is the kind of person who lives only in the moment these days, a cigarette and a beer at a time, maybe a plate of pot roast down at the bar, but other than that? She can’t imagine a life where anyone has the answers to such existential questions.

Jules is about to enter her senior year of high school, while Mary Pat is a hard 42 - her son, Noel, overdosed after coming home from Vietnam her first husband, a small-time gangster, had to be declared dead her most recent husband left her due to her capacity for hatred - and both are suffused with a troubling mixture of rage and yearning.

It’s the summer of 1974, the city lighted to pop as it awaits the desegregation of its public schools through court-mandated busing.

The two women are walking the streets of Southie, the Boston neighborhood Lehane has often examined. If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from, whose fees support independent bookstores.Įarly on in “ Small Mercies,” which may be Dennis Lehane’s final novel if one is to believe his recent interviews, 17-year-old Jules asks her mother, Mary Pat Fennessy, “You ever wonder if there’s some different place?”

Mystic River by Dennis Lehane