Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane

Moonlight Mile is what I call airport fiction -- the kind of book you can buy in paperback at the airport gift shop and buzz through on your three hour flight and the kind of book that always makes me want to assure people that I do often read books of more substance. 

That said, I was not sorry I read Moonlight Mile. After I started reading, I realized that several of the characters have been present in one or more of Lehane's previous novels.  I wondered whether I should put it down and start with an earlier book -- I don't like picking up a series in the middle.  But Lehane says it can stand on its own and I agree with that assessment. 

I won't say much more about it here, but I will say that, while in some ways a semi-typical detective-y, airport fiction-y kind of story, Mile also delivers a fair bit of substance -- and a presentation of life that is gritty but hopeful, dark but possessing a fair number of people you can love and trust.  I'm down with that. 

I'll leave you with a short quote that probably won't strike others the way it did me, but that I'm still thinking about:

I just notice people sometimes mistake their life choices for their moral ones.
~p.133, Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane