In Darkness, Take My Hand, Dennis Lehane gives readers an authentic view of the Boston suburb of Dorchester, the scene of A Drink Before the War, winner of the Shamus Award from the Private Eye Writers of America. Dorchester, a solid blue-collar town with no shortage of good spots at which to sully up to the bar for a beer, is tarnished by a 20-year string of strangely similar killings. Patrick Kenzie, a local, becomes the improbable hero of this tale when he makes it his business to solve the slayings. The characters he encounters in Dorchester, with their distinctive accents and colorful pasts, make this mystery not only thrilling, but wildly entertaining.