Dennis Lehane Books in Order
See all Dennis Lehane books in order, including the Kenzie & Gennaro and Coughlin novels, with summaries, series background, and tips on where to start.
Last updated: December 22, 2025
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Publication Order
19 books
Small Mercies
by Dennis Lehane
2023
In the sweltering summer of 1974, South Boston single mother Mary Pat Fennessy is barely keeping the lights on when her teenage daughter goes missing. The same night, a young Black man dies on the subway tracks, and Mary Pat's search forces her to confront the Irish mob and her own community's racism.
Since We Fell
by Dennis Lehane
2017
Rachel Childs is a former journalist whose on-air breakdown leaves her housebound and anxious, seemingly saved by a kind, steady husband. One chance sighting cracks that trust, pulling her into a twisting investigation of who he really is and how far she'll go to protect herself.
World Gone By
by Dennis Lehane
2015
Ten years after building a bootlegging empire, Joe Coughlin now serves as trusted consigliere to a Tampa crime family and devoted father to his young son. Warned that someone close has ordered his murder, he has two weeks to untangle shifting loyalties before the past collects its debt.
Recommended by:
The Drop
by Dennis Lehane
2014
Lonely bartender Bob Saginowski works at a mob-run bar in Brooklyn that doubles as a money drop. After he rescues an abused puppy and a seemingly simple robbery goes bad, Bob is pulled into a dangerous standoff with the Chechen mob, a violent ex-con, and his own buried past.
Red Eye
by Michael Connelly
2014
Harry Bosch flies to Boston chasing a lead in a long-cold murder while local PI Patrick Kenzie hunts the same man over a missing seventh-grader. When their paths collide outside the suspect's house, each detective must trade information and instincts to solve both crimes.
When They Are Done With Us
by Luanne Rice
2012
A noir story set in Staten Island, focusing on a woman grappling with her son's troubling behavior while she becomes obsessed with a tragedy involving a neighbor. It explores themes of entrapment and the dark undercurrents of family life.
The Hollywood I Remembered
by Lee Child
2012
A suburban woman trapped with a corrupt, abusive husband turns to a professional killer for help. As the plan unfolds, the story slowly reveals who is really being used and what vengeance looks like when greed and moral rot have hollowed everyone out.
Live by Night
by Dennis Lehane
2012
Joe Coughlin, the rebellious son of a respected Boston police captain, turns from petty theft to Prohibition-era bootlegging. Prison, gang alliances, and a posting to rum-soaked Tampa transform him into a powerful crime boss, even as love and conscience threaten to undo his hard-won empire.
Moonlight Mile
by Dennis Lehane
2010
Twelve years after finding missing toddler Amanda McCready, Patrick and Angie—now married with a daughter—learn that Amanda has vanished again as a brilliant but secretive teenager. Revisiting the case that haunts them, they follow a trail of lies through Boston's underworld while questioning their past choice.
Animal Rescue
by Dennis Lehane
2009
Bob, a solitary Boston bartender, finds a battered pit bull puppy in a trash can and reluctantly takes it in with help from wary neighbor Nadia. When the dog's violent former owner comes looking, Bob is pushed into a dangerous clash with local toughs and the bar's criminal backers.
The Given Day
by Dennis Lehane
2008
Set in Boston and Tulsa at the end of World War I, this novel follows patrolman Danny Coughlin and Black laborer Luther Laurence through labor unrest, racism, and political crackdowns. Their lives intersect around the 1919 Boston police strike, where loyalty, survival, and justice collide.
Coronado
by Dennis Lehane
2006
This collection brings together five gritty short stories and a two-act play that trace small-town grudges, damaged families, and bad decisions that spiral into violence. Different settings and eras share the same question: how far people will go once love, money, or pride are on the line.
Shutter Island
by Dennis Lehane
2003
U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels travels to Shutter Island, home to a hospital for the criminally insane, to find a missing murderer. Trapped by a storm, he uncovers sinister experiments and begins to question the staff, his partner, and even his own memories.
Mystic River
by Dennis Lehane
2001
Childhood friends Sean Devine, Jimmy Marcus, and Dave Boyle are torn apart after Dave is abducted on their Boston street. Twenty-five years later, Jimmy's daughter is murdered and Sean, now a homicide detective, must investigate, dragging all three men back into buried trauma and suspicion.
Prayers for Rain
by Dennis Lehane
1999
After a former client leaps from a Boston landmark, Patrick Kenzie learns she was stalked and systematically broken down before her death. His investigation exposes a meticulous predator who ruins lives for sport and is more than willing to turn that focus on Patrick.
Gone, Baby, Gone
by Dennis Lehane
1998
When four-year-old Amanda McCready disappears from a working-class Boston neighborhood, her aunt begs Kenzie and Gennaro to help. What begins as a missing-child case becomes a wrenching moral dilemma about neglect, rescue, and who has the right to decide where a child truly belongs.
Sacred
by Dennis Lehane
1997
A dying billionaire hires Patrick and Angie to find his missing daughter, along with the private eye who vanished while tracking her. Following the trail from Boston to Florida, they uncover a web of corporate grief counseling schemes, stolen money, and betrayals that make trust a deadly risk.
Darkness, Take My Hand
by Dennis Lehane
1996
Kenzie and Gennaro agree to protect the son of a prominent psychiatrist and soon find a trail of savagely mutilated bodies. The killings point toward a serial murderer who should be locked away, tying new crimes to the investigators' own violent past.
A Drink Before the War
by Dennis Lehane
1994
Boston private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro are hired by powerful politicians to recover documents stolen by a cleaning woman. The search drags them through gang territory and City Hall back rooms, forcing them to choose sides in a brutal fight over race, power, and secrets.
Where should I start?
If you want to follow his Boston private eyes: A Drink Before the War → Darkness, Take My Hand → Sacred → Gone, Baby, Gone → Prayers for Rain → Moonlight Mile.
If you prefer intense standalone crime novels: Mystic River → Shutter Island → Since We Fell.
If you like sweeping historical crime sagas: The Given Day → Live by Night → World Gone By.
If you want his most recent Boston story: Small Mercies.
If you just want a quick taste of his world: Coronado → The Drop → Animal Rescue → Red Eye.
Author bio
Dennis Lehane grew up in Dorchester, a working‑class neighborhood of Boston where tight streets, triple‑deckers, and corner bars later became the backdrop for many of his stories. The son of Irish immigrants, he was the youngest of five children in a house where books and arguments were both taken seriously.
As a kid he spent long hours at the Uphams Corner branch and later the Boston Public Library’s central building, discovering that a free library card could take him far beyond his own block. He went on to Boston College High School and then Eckerd College in Florida, where a creative writing class made him take his own stories seriously. A graduate degree from Florida International University followed, but for years he paid the bills with shift work – counseling mentally disabled and abused children, waiting tables, parking cars, loading trucks, doing whatever kept the lights on while he kept writing.
Crime fiction turned out to be the form that fit. A Drink Before the War, published in 1994, introduced Boston private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro and won the Shamus Award for best first detective novel. Set in Dorchester and the neighboring streets he knew well, the series follows the pair through gang wars, serial killings, missing‑child cases, and the long aftershocks of domestic violence. Across Darkness, Take My Hand, Sacred, Gone, Baby, Gone, Prayers for Rain, and Moonlight Mile, the books blend gallows humor with hard questions about loyalty, class, and how much damage a neighborhood can absorb.
Lehane’s readership widened with Mystic River, a story about three Boston boys scarred by an abduction and reunited decades later by the murder of a teenager. Shutter Island pushed him deeper into psychological territory, sending a U.S. Marshal to an isolated hospital for the criminally insane where even his own memories may be false. He then moved into historical fiction with The Given Day, Live by Night, and World Gone By, tracing the Coughlin family through the 1919 Boston police strike, Prohibition‑era bootlegging, and the criminal underworld of Tampa and Cuba. Later standalones such as Since We Fell and Small Mercies return to more intimate scales while still grappling with trauma, racism, faith, and the way ordinary people justify terrible choices.
Several of these books made a second life on screen. Mystic River, Gone, Baby, Gone, Shutter Island, and Live by Night were adapted into major films by directors like Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorsese, and Ben Affleck. His short story 'Animal Rescue' became the film The Drop, which he adapted himself, turning a brief piece of fiction about a lonely bartender and an abandoned dog into a full‑length crime story.
At the same time, Lehane built a parallel career in television. He wrote for The Wire and later worked as a writer‑producer on Boardwalk Empire and Bloodline. He helped bring three Stephen King novels – Mr. Mercedes, End of Watch, and The Outsider – to TV, then created the true‑crime miniseries Black Bird for streaming and went on to develop new crime dramas exploring obsession, identity, and the limits of justice.
Teaching and community work run alongside the writing. Lehane has taught fiction at places like Harvard and Pine Manor, served on the boards of Eckerd College and the Boston Public Library, and often credits librarians with giving him his career. Now living in California with his family, he still writes about Boston’s triple‑deckers, project hallways, and corner bars, tracing how people stay loyal – or fail to – when the world gives them every reason to look out only for themselves.
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