Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane
'Small Mercies' by Dennis Lehane is a crime mystery set amongst Boston's southside Irish community during a sweltering summer in '74. Mary Pat Fennessy is a single mother, just about surviving but doing her best for her daughter Jules. She finds her worries increasing when Jules doesn't return home one evening, and she sets out to find her.
Desegregation
The events take place against a backdrop of racial tensions. after the US District Court rules that the Boston School Committee had ‘systematically disadvantaged black school children’ in the public school system. Black schoolchildren are to be bussed into the local 'white' schools, with some going the other way, and the tight-knit 'Southie' community are in uproar. Protests are planned, placards are being distributed - the desegregation of the public schools is going to be resisted.
And it's here we meet Mary Pat, tired and middle-aged in the kitchen of her home in the projects, taking delivery of placards from one of the local crew members, who are happy to support the cause. Working in a nursing home and scrimping and saving to provide, she's already lost a son to heroin, after he returned from Vietnam. A recent marriage has also broken down - she's alone but she's a tough nut.
The problems start when Jules goes out with her friends one evening, and doesn't come home. At the same, just when racial tensions are reaching boiling point, the body of a young black man is found along the tracks at the local train stop. Are the two events connected? Mary Pat sets off to find out, which brings her into contact with the local Butler crew, who make it their business to know everything that goes on.
Boston Irish Community
Helping to 'organise' the protests are the local crew, led by Marty Butler. They control, or rather 'protect' the local community, though it doesn't take much to rile up the people. They know what's going on, and you don't rat out on your own. Everyone knows their place in the societal hierarchy, and woe betide those who don't or challenge it. You know where the real power lies, and who wields it.
I didn't grow up in Boston's Irish community in the seventies but a lot of the tensions were familiar to me. I was raised in a small nationalist town along the border in Ireland in the seventies and eighties, where sectarian strife was never far away. The idea of it being us against them, of a tight, backs-to-the-wall people, holding out against the authorities. Different situations and countries, but the claustrophobia and tensions were familiar. And the segregation, religious rather than racial, in where you lived, in schools, mixed socially - that was also very real. Obviously, there was a conflict going on, so it's a bit different, but I could relate to the tension. You had to protect each other.
Some of the characters are unashamedly racist in 'Small Merices', so they use racist terms. It's a book very much set in a certain era, and for the characters to have spoken any other way wouldn't have rang true. So if that offends you, or you don't want to read scenes of graphic violence and drug use, I suggest this book isn't for you.
Mary Pat Fennessy
Mary Pat Fennessy is a ferocious character, a swirling maelstrom of a woman. She undergoes a painful, traumatic 'journey' that's as powerful as I've read in a book in some time. She is complicated but nuanced and I found myself equally appalled by her actions, then rooting for her. It's complicated, as it should be. There's no black and white, only grey.
When you ain't got nothing, you got nothing left to lose - Bob Dylan
A word too for the homicide Detective Coyne, who could surely carry a novel on his own. Haunted by his nightmares from Vietnam and battling addiction, he's investigating the death of the young black man, determined to get justice even though he's facing a wall of silence in the community.
“They’re poor because there’s a limited amount of good luck in this world, and they’ve never been given any. If it doesn’t fall from the sky and land on you, doesn’t find you when it wakes up every morning and goes looking for someone to attach itself to, there isn’t a damn thing you can do. There are way more people in the world than there is luck, so you’re either in the right place at the right time at the very second luck shows up, for once and nevermore. Or you aren’t. In which case . . . Shit happens. It is what it is. Whatta ya gonna do.”
Parenting
It's very much about parents protecting their children, or trying to in the toughest of situations. Doing whatever it takes to help them break the chains of poverty, of desperation, which infect everything in the projects. It's a hard place to be a parent.
'I can't protect you. I can do what I can, teach you as much as I know. But if I'm not there when the world comes to takes its bite - and even if i am - there's no guarantee I can stop it. I can love you, I can support you, but I can't keep you safe. And that scares the ever-living shit out of me. every day, every minute, every breath.'
The community bonds are constrictor-tight, and the roots are incredibly deep, stretching back through generations, There's a loyalty among people that can be hard to fathom unless you're from places like this.
Race
Race looms like a thundercloud over the whole book - you’re waiting for an explosion to come at any time. Lehane also does a fine job in showing how peoples attitudes change, but it takes extreme circumstances to do so. It's also about those in criminality who prey on the community, bloodsuckers happy for the strife and hate that act as cover for their nefarious activities.
“Race don’t come into it. They keep us fighting among ourselves like dogs for table scraps so we won’t catch them making off with the feast.”
By looking at the past, it also shines a light on the current poisonous political climate in the US. Whilst many people are just doing their best to get on with their lives, there are hateful words and behaviors always close to the surface. From the outside, it doesn't appear to be any better.
It's also typical that it's not in the areas that the liberal and upper classes live where desegregation takes place in the schools. It's the public school system, and this is mentioned by the characters on a couple of occasions. There's a terrific scene where a mob turns its anger on 'famous' politician of the time.
'No matter what we claim in public, in private we know that the only law and the only god is money. If you have enough of it, you don't have to suffer consequences and you don't have to suffer for your ideals, you just foist them on something else and feel good about the nobility of your intentions.'
Small Mercies Summary
This is such a tightly-plotted thriller, with some superb set pieces. It's believable, because of the white-hot fury, but it goes to places I didn't expect. And it's got my favorite thing; honest-to-god dialogue that reveals character. The whole book has got this leanness to it, that the story has been chiseled out with absolutely not one word wasted or unnecessary scene.
If you've read this blog before, you'll know I'm a big Michael Connelly fan. I suspect that I'll be drilling into Lehane's back catalog now - wonderfully paced, fascinating social commentary, flawed, believable characters - I'm all in.
It's a brutal book, but also fierce, compelling, and utterly authentic. It's a tough, gritty thriller that doesn't release its grip, pretty much from the first page. Powerful stuff altogether.
320 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 25, 2023 by Abacus