Cooked to perfection, ...this collection is not, but which collection of short fiction is anyway.Lehane is a tremendously gifted crime writer. Mystic River will always be on top 10 books of all time. There's this innate style to his writing which captures the jaggedness of his characters to a fucking T. He captures this unnerving quality of Suburbia and the corrosive influence it has on you. Not a lot to like in here... you get Until Gwen, the same story written as a play and as a tiny short sto...

some great short stories, dark, tragedy, going deep into the soul. not all are the same quality but at least two so good that stay with you long. all have criminal element but is so twisted with human emotions that it seems to me that the bad becomes so human even when if you looking into it directly is real bad.

"People are selfish, Doctor- odiously, monstrously, but in so small and paltry a monstrousness that we barely notice it."

Every story felt like a glimpse into another one of the darkest parts of a human mind. Lehane proves once again that he is one of the best writers of dark thrillers and mysteries.

Running Out of Dog - 5*
ICU - 4*
Gone Down to Corpus - 3.5*
Mushrooms - 2.5*
Until Gwen - 5*
Coronado the play - 5*

Great! Simply great!This book was great, simply great! Dennis Lehane is the new Harry Crews, writing Americana low life trailer trash books just the way they should be written, unpredictable and with no respect for political, legal, or moral authority. His characters are erratic and unreliable, suffering from just about every personality disorder you can name; depression, mania, stress, grief, alcohol, drugs.These stories are unpredictable, uncontrollable and, in a way, challenging. I absolutely...

Coronado is a collection of six short stories by author Dennis Lehane.Running out of Dog – A well-written tale about small town secrecy. Running out of Dog is fueled by pent-up male-aggression threatening to burst inside those who seem to lack a true purpose in life. Blue, the best friend of protagonist Elgin, is the kind of man who when you look into his eyes, you see a whole lot of nothing. As Elgin says, he’s a man who has been dying since he was born.I really liked this one – a great way to ...

Picked this book of short stories off my to-read shelf last night. The first story("Running Out of Dog") seems to be kind of cliched Southern Gothic stuff, but well-enough written.2 - "ICU" - a bit of fancy writing in pursuit of Kafkaesque mystery-whimsy. Existential dread?3 - "Gone Down to Corpus" - a brief look at the lives of a few youthful losers in Texas. Meh. Again, the prose has a lot of attitude, but seems at times to be an assigned exercise for a fiction-writing workshop.4 - "Mushrooms"...

Sort of hit and miss with these short crime pieces but “Until Gwen” is enough of a pay-off for the whole book. "YOUR FATHER PICKS you up from prison in a stolen Dodge Neon with an eight ball in the glove compartment and a hooker named Mandy in the backseat."I defy any fan of pulp noir to stop reading after that first line. The story is as remarkable for what he writes as for what he demands of readers to imagine for themselves. I actually like this stuff more than some of his long fiction. It’s ...

"What had begun as a nighttime ride into the unknown had turned cold and stale during the hard yellow lurch into morning" (34).“The man’s eyes are the clear and the bright of skyscraper panes” (58).“…a guy in a johnny leading his IV-stand across the carpet as if it’s a slow relative…” (63).“Though he still feels like apologizing. It’s natural, he supposes, to not want to be the cause of any sort of ado, any kind of mass consternation. It’s a judgment, no matter how nebulous, of your entire life”...

One of the best short stories I've ever read is in this collection: "Until Gwen."

Okay, there's a snow storm and I have to go to my book shelf. I find an unread book with the inscription, "Peggy, Best wishes for your writing," signed by Dennis Lehane. Ouch. I think I feel so guilty whenever my mother gives me a book signed by someone that she tells that I'm a writer I have to hide it. Don't even ask about the Andre Dubus III fiasco. Anyway, I realized that I'd confused Lehane with another South Boston writer and was probably just terrified because I've seen the movies Mystic ...