03/27/2017 Set in contemporary Boston, this expertly wrought character study masquerading as a thriller from Edgar-winner Lehane (World Gone By) features his first-ever female protagonist. Once a star journalist, until something snapped during her TV coverage of the devastation in Haiti following the 2009 earthquake, Rachel Childs now barely leaves her house. Lehane portrays the frantic hamster wheel of waxing and waning anxiety with unnerving clarity. A lifetime of tension, much of it spawning from her now-deceased mother’s refusal to disclose the identity of Rachel’s father, weighs on Rachel. The quest to put a name to half her DNA is what first sets Rachel on a collision course with Brian Delacroix, a PI (or so he claims) who advises her against the whole thing. Fast forward several years, and Rachel and Brian meet again. Their eventual marriage is romantic and life-affirming, as Brian coaxes Rachel through the swamp of her psyche, until it’s suddenly not. The book’s conspiracy plot doesn’t cut the deepest; it’s Lehane’s intensely intimate portrayal of a woman tormented by her own mind. 15-city tour. Agent: Ann Rittenberg, Ann Rittenberg Literary. (May)
A riveting exercise in psychological suspense.
Lehane has written two books-one, an insightful examination of the search for identity and belonging, and two, a thriller that constantly leaves you guessing-and then smashed them together into one terrific read.
A pleasantly twisted character study and a love story. . . . Lehane is in command of what he’s doing.
Endlessly surprising. . . . [A] twisty tale.
A pleasantly twisted character study and a love story. . . . Lehane is in command of what he’s doing.
[Since We Fell ] should have crime fiction fans busting out the bottle rockets and champagne. . . . It’s impossible not to succumb.
Make no mistake, Since We Fell is crime fiction, filled with con men, murder, greed and revenge. But the love story gives this novel its heart.
02/15/2017 After covering tragic events in Haiti, reporter Rachel Childs suffers a mental breakdown on live TV and is fired. Her public trauma leads to divorce and severe agoraphobia. Almost two years later, she has remarried and is finally starting to recover—until the day she spots her husband, Brian, who is supposedly out of the country. When she confronts him, Brian convinces her otherwise, and facts seem to support his story and the existence of a doppelgänger. When a mysterious friend of Brian's reappears and divulges new information, she finally follows Brian and his true betrayal is revealed. Rachel's life careens into a nightmare and a fight for her life as she discovers the depth of his deception. The first third of this book details Rachel's background and reads like literary fiction. The latter portion ventures into thriller territory. Rachel's fully-developed character grounds the suspense to ease this shift, and Lehane (Shutter Island; Live by Night) writes with a smooth ease that makes the pages fly by. VERDICT Readers will enjoy going along for the ride in this engrossing story about love, deception, and marital commitment. [See Prepub Alert, 11/7/16.]—Emily Byers, Salem P.L., OR
★ 2017-02-06 Don't zoom through this latest entry in Lehane's illustrious body of work. You'll miss plenty of intrigue, intricacies, and emotional subtleties.The clinical term for what ails journalist Rachel Childs is "agoraphobia." Even if the term didn't appear twice in the novel, it'd be easy enough for the reader to identify—and identify with—her pain thanks to Lehane's delicate, incisive rendering of her various symptoms. They include panic, rage, depression, and, most of all, self-loathing. ("That's who I've become," she thinks to herself. "A creature below contempt.") The reasons behind Rachel's breakdown are likewise cataloged in short, vivid strokes: a childhood spent mostly with her brittle, brilliant mother who refused to tell her anything at all about her father, leading to a yearslong search for that father culminating in desolation and heartbreak. The coup de grâce to Rebecca's self-esteem comes when her meteoric rise to prominence as a Boston TV reporter literally crashes from her on-camera nervous collapse while covering the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Through all these jolts and traumas, one person is always around, whether close or from a distance: Brian Delacroix, a witty, handsome Canadian-born businessman whom she first meets as a private investigator, later through his occasional "keep-your-chin-up" e-mails, and then, after she's all but locked herself away in her apartment, outside a South End bar. Brian gradually becomes the only one who can even begin to draw Rachel out of her deep blue funk, first as a confidant, then as a lover, and finally as her husband. Happily ever after? You know there's no such thing in a Lehane novel if you've dived into such rueful, knotty narratives as Mystic River (2001), Shutter Island (2003), and World Gone By (2015). It spoils nothing to disclose that Brian isn't quite who Rachel thinks he is. But as she discovers when she tentatively, gradually subdues her demons to seek the truth, Rachel isn't quite who she thinks she is either. What seems at the start to be an edgy psychological mystery seamlessly transforms into a crafty, ingenious tale of murder and deception—and a deeply resonant account of one woman's effort to heal deep wounds that don't easily show.
[Lehane] remains one of the great, diabolical thriller kings who seems intimately acquainted with darkness and can make it seep from the page.” — New York Times
“A pleasantly twisted character study and a love story. . . . Lehane is in command of what he’s doing.” — Washington Post
“A pleasantly twisted character study and a love story. . . . Lehane is in command of what he’s doing.” — Tampa Bay Times
“Lehane has written two books-one, an insightful examination of the search for identity and belonging, and two, a thriller that constantly leaves you guessing-and then smashed them together into one terrific read.” — Gillian Flynn
“A riveting exercise in psychological suspense.” — Providence Journal
“Endlessly surprising. . . . [A] twisty tale.” — Wall Street Journal
“Lehane writes expert, compelling thrillers. . . . He’s one of the game changers who smashed the imaginary boundary between genre and literature, proving that we can have the best of both at once.” — Tana French, Washington Post
“Make no mistake, Since We Fell is crime fiction, filled with con men, murder, greed and revenge. But the love story gives this novel its heart.” — Associated Press
“[Lehane’s] work always combines pulp thrills with literary heart and sophistication.” — Entertainment Weekly
“The most thrilling novel I’ll read all year. Since We Fell is simmering with emotion, menace, and humor. I loved it.” — Kate Atkinson
“Complex, tense, compelling, and an emotional and strategic hall of mirrors, where nothing is what it seems—but I would follow Dennis Lehane anywhere.” — Lee Child
“Another winner from the author of Mystic River . . . . A raucous mix of lust, greed, and betrayal.” — AARP Magazine
“The surfeit of plot twists and emotional baggage are buoyed by Lehane’s hard-boiled lyricism and peerless feel for New England noir.” — USA Today
“One doesn’t ‘read’ Since We Fell so much as plunge and tumble through its pages like a raft in white water. A sweet bullet of a book.” — Richard Price
“Once you pick up a Dennis Lehane novel, you’re hooked. It’s just that simple. Since We Fell is a complex, compelling, page-turner of a novel from a master storyteller at the top of his game.” — Kristin Hannah
“[Since We Fell ] should have crime fiction fans busting out the bottle rockets and champagne. . . . It’s impossible not to succumb.” — Lithub
“With sharply acute characterization, this is classic Lehane.” — The Guardian
“A ride you won’t want to miss.” — New York Journal of Books
“The mystery and intrigue never let go; the twists and turns are engaging and unexpected all the way down the track.” — James Lee Burke
[Lehane] remains one of the great, diabolical thriller kings who seems intimately acquainted with darkness and can make it seep from the page.
Lehane writes expert, compelling thrillers. . . . He’s one of the game changers who smashed the imaginary boundary between genre and literature, proving that we can have the best of both at once.
Make no mistake, Since We Fell is crime fiction, filled with con men, murder, greed and revenge. But the love story gives this novel its heart.
Endlessly surprising. . . . [A] twisty tale.
The most thrilling novel I’ll read all year. Since We Fell is simmering with emotion, menace, and humor. I loved it.
A pleasantly twisted character study and a love story. . . . Lehane is in command of what he’s doing.
[Lehane’s] work always combines pulp thrills with literary heart and sophistication.
Complex, tense, compelling, and an emotional and strategic hall of mirrors, where nothing is what it seems—but I would follow Dennis Lehane anywhere.
A ride you won’t want to miss.
New York Journal of Books
The surfeit of plot twists and emotional baggage are buoyed by Lehane’s hard-boiled lyricism and peerless feel for New England noir.
With sharply acute characterization, this is classic Lehane.
Once you pick up a Dennis Lehane novel, you’re hooked. It’s just that simple. Since We Fell is a complex, compelling, page-turner of a novel from a master storyteller at the top of his game.
One doesn’t ‘read’ Since We Fell so much as plunge and tumble through its pages like a raft in white water. A sweet bullet of a book.
Another winner from the author of Mystic River . . . . A raucous mix of lust, greed, and betrayal.
The mystery and intrigue never let go; the twists and turns are engaging and unexpected all the way down the track.
The surfeit of plot twists and emotional baggage are buoyed by Lehane’s hard-boiled lyricism and peerless feel for New England noir.
If you listen to audiobooks in the car, prepare to find yourself sitting in the driveway with this one. Julia Whelan does a near flawless job delivering this palpitation-inducing psychological thriller from the great Dennis Lehane. She’s good at accents, switching ages and genders, and her pacing is impeccable. Rachel Childs, the only child of a beautiful, very smart, very damaged mother, is looking for her father, whose identity she never knew. Always a great setup, but Lehane is using it as a springboard to explain how Rachel falls into a totally different swamp of deceptions. Whelan struggles with pronouncing “atheneum,” and someone “demured” at one point instead of demurring, or this performance would be a bases-loaded home run. Maybe is anyway. B.G. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine