‘Small Mercies’ by Dennis Lehane   (2023) – 299 pages

Being almost entirely a “literary” reader, I usually don’t pay much attention to best seller lists or the books that are on them. However once in a while , one of these best sellers will capture my interest. Dennis Lehane’s crime thriller ‘Small Mercies’ tempted me to see how Lehane would handle it in these times when there seems to be so much racial hatred by white people going around.

The year is 1974. Mary Pat Fennessey has lived in South Boston, Southie, all her life. She has already lost her Vietnam vet son to drugs, and now her daughter has turned up missing.

“You raised a child who thought hating people was okay. You allowed that hate, you probably fostered it. And your little child and her racist friends, who were all raised by racist parents just like you, were sent out into the world like little fucking hand grenades of hate and stupidity.”

1974 was the year that school busing was proposed. The idea was to bus students from predominantly black neighborhoods to schools in predominantly white neighborhoods and visa versa. Of course only in the poorer neighborhoods was busing to take place. Thus racial tensions were high.

In Southie, there is a group of white men, the Butler crew, who run things and supposedly fix things in the neighborhood. The Butler crew has a lot of cops on their payroll.

Mary Pat, in her search for her daughter, has the help of a good cop, Bobby Coyne. Bobby tells Mary Pat about his parents:

“But they also weren’t racists, Something about the idea of it – the pure irrationality of it – offended them. They didn’t think black people were necessarily good, don’t get me wrong, they just thought that everyone – regardless of what color they were – was probably an asshole. And to say you were less of an asshole because your skin was lighter was reprehensible to them. It just made you a bigger asshole.”

‘Small Mercies’ is a page-turner, a propulsive read. There is a lot of vigilante justice. Once I started reading, I found it difficult to stop, and that’s something I really like in my fiction. It has few of the subtleties I usually expect from fiction, but for this one time only that is OK.

“…and he considers the possibility that maybe the opposite of hate is not love. It’s hope. Because hate takes years to build, but hope can come sliding along the corner when you’re not even looking.”

Grade:    A-