Dear Great Book Guru,  We just came back from Sea Cliff Beach where we had a great lunch at the Potters’ Cliffside Café. Everything was delicious but the lobster roll and turkey wrap were particularly wonderful!  While there, I listened in on a couple’s conversation nearby (always a fun Sea Cliff thing to do) and they were discussing a new book - a noir mystery set in 1970’s Boston.  Sound familiar?  Loving the Cliffside Café

Dear Loving…. Dennis Lehane’s SMALL MERCIES is a newly published bestseller and well worth the read.  Set in the racially charged summer of 1974, the book deals with crime, race, and class - in and about an Irish American housing project.  Mary Pat Fennessy has lived there all her forty or so years, raised two children, married twice, and is struggling desperately to get out of debt. Her childhood friends are involved with the mob so when her daughter does not return home one evening, she turns to them for help.  She soon finds herself enmeshed in a world where violence is the norm and she is both victim and perpetrator. A young black man is found dead on the subway tracks nearby and we learn that his murder is connected to her missing daughter, the upcoming school desegregation rally, and a widespread drug operation. Mary Pat has a moment of epiphany when she realizes her long held beliefs have little basis in reality. The grief and contrition she feels is described in exquisite detail, but few of the other characters share her moral awakening. The reader is left to question if goodness will ever triumph.  Highly recommended!