1997, 383pp.

from barnesandnoble.com:
Synopsis

The master of the new noir, Dennis Lehane brilliantly interweaves beauty and violence, integrity and evil in this thrilling, powerfully resonant novel.

A beautiful, grief-stricken woman has vanished without a trace. So has the detective hired to find her. And a lot of money. Enter savvy, tough-nosed private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro. Rooted in the no-nonsense streets of Boston's blue-collar Dorchester, they've seen it all — and survived. But this case leads them into unexpected territory where nothing is sacred — a land of lies and corruption where trusting anyone could get them killed ... where taking any step could be their last.

Publishers Weekly
Sharp verbal patter, a noirish kind of good/bad girl and a dying and quite possibly sinister old man all enliven this third stellar effort from the author of the Shamus Award-winning A Drink Before the War and Darkness, Take My Hand. PI Angela Gennaro lost her husband, and her partner, Patrick Kenzie, lost much of the skin from his face in their last outing. Now the Boston-based sleuthing partners are recovering nicely, slowly succumbing to a mutual attraction and searching for a missing girl. Billionaire Trevor Stone, dying of cancer, hires Patrick and Angie to find his daughter Desiree only after his first choice, Jay Becker, who was Patrick's mentor, disappeared during his quest for Desiree. The young woman was last seen at the highly questionable Grief Release Inc., getting over the year-old murder of her mother and hanging out with Sean Price. After Price ripped off the group, Desiree vanished with him. Is Trevor on the level? Is Desiree a wounded angel or something else entirely? While following the trail, Angie and Patrick emerge, in Patrick's smart and often funny narration, as boldly sketched characters who leap fully formed from the pages. For most of the novel, the punishing pace and internal plot logic perform in perfect tandem. Only Desiree's long-delayed entrance and an over-the-top ending are jarring. In all other respects, Lehane proves he belongs in the big leagues with another gritty and surpassingly entertaining mystery.

Kirkus Reviews
The kidnapping really should have tipped them off. You can't have much of a relationship with a client who grabs you off the street, drugs you, and ties you to a couple of chairs while he makes his pitch. But dying billionaire Trevor Stone, whose wife is dead and whose daughter has disappeared, is obviously a man in pain, and the $50,000 retainer he offers (plus $200,000 for expenses) goes a long way to soften the insult. So Boston shamus Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro, his partner, friend, and sometime lover, agree to follow Patrick's vanished mentor Jay Becker into the darkness surrounding beautiful, depressed Desiree Stone, and soon—with only a brief intermission for a lovely farewell bash for their prison-bound buddy Bubba Rogowski—they're tangling with fraudulent grief counselors, a clever and vindictive IRS computer geek, and the Church of Truth and Revelation. And that's only the beginning, since the trail of Desiree's last known companion leads to Tampa, where the serious corpses will start to pile up, and where they'll finally get an inkling of the true relationship between their megalomaniac client and his anaconda-like daughter, "a Noël Coward play that had been rewritten by Sam Shepard." Lehane's barn-burning third novel (Darkness, Take My Hand, 1996, etc.) packs enough beatings, betrayals, unmaskings, resurrections, smart talk, and untrustworthy people for the most jaded palate. If you haven't discovered this gifted newcomer yet, you'd better hurry before his ship of fools and knaves casts off without you.

Restocking the LFL after Spring clean to greet House Tour visitors. Let travel. Tell.