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"Coronado: Stories" by Dennis Lehane, Morrow, 224 pages, $25.95.
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Hardcore fans may object to the fact that the latest work from suspense master Dennis Lehane involves short stories instead of serial killers. But a wide streak of Lehane's vivid and melancholy darkness winds through this mean, gripping collection, buffeting its bleak landscapes and shaping its desperate characters.
Lehane is the author of a mind-boggling array of excellent crime fiction: the wrenching "Mystic River," turned into a terrific film by Clint Eastwood; the creepy, heart-stopping "Shutter Island," set at a hospital for the criminally insane; Shamus Award winner "A Drink Before the War," which introduced private investigator Patrick Kenzie of South Boston; "Darkness, Take My Hand," the second book in the Kenzie series and one of the scariest thrillers ever written.
Crime, violence and death also form the backbone of "Coronado," which includes four previously published stories, a play based on one of them and a new work, "Mushrooms," a drug-dusted revenge tale that acts as an unsettling snapshot of amorality.
Linking the stories are young men foundering in the face of an empty future. In the disturbing "Running Out of Dog," two Vietnam vets return to their small South Carolina town and cope with restless estrangement in different ways. Elgin has an affair. Blue, at the mayor's request, takes up shooting the city's troublesome stray dogs, which have become a liability to tourists driving down the interstate. "Lot of money being poured into Eden these days, the governor said, lot of steps being taken to change her image, and he for one would be goddamned if a bunch of misbehaving canines was going to mess all that up."
But Elgin, noting his friend's increasing weirdness, fears that his next target will be something else.
"ICU" is built around a flimsy, less arresting premise: A man hides from pursuers in a hospital, rotating through waiting rooms, watching the dramas that unfold and basking in the care of strangers. "There is a basic human concern in hospitals, a unity. And he begins to suspect he is addicted to it." "Gone Down to Corpus" returns to gritty territory: A high school football player, just graduated with a dead-end future looming, intends to destroy a teammate's house but falls for his wild sister instead.
The centerpiece is the riveting "Until Gwen," which opens with an unforgettable image: "Your father picks you up from prison in a stolen Dodge Neon with an 8 ball in the glove compartment and a hooker named Mandy in the backseat."
The story is a simple, stark portrait of evil, so enticing that Lehane couldn't let go. Its characters, he writes, "kept walking around in my head, telling me that we weren't done yet." So he rewrote the piece as the play "Coronado" and cast his actor brother as the narrator's murderous dad. The transformation from prose to script is interesting, but it's the story that lingers, reminding you of the grim elegance of Lehane's imagination.
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(c) 2006, The Miami Herald. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service.
