Lessons learned from Dennis Lehane

Last year this writer wrote a short story about a guy who saves a girl from a mean boyfriend. There was a flaw in my tale, however. Only a certain novel by Dennis Lehane made me realize that flaw lurked in that story's text.

That novel was A Drink before the War; the first in his Patrick Kenzie-Angela Gennaro series of detective novels. In fact, it was a subplot involving Angela that made me realize the flaw. In this novel, Angela is married to a very abusive husband named Phil. So abusive in fact that Patrick beats the guy up for it.

But does Angie's abusive beau come back looking for Patrick once he gets out of the hospital? Nope. Bullies are cowards who only pick on the helpless; despite Angela being a tough PI, her love for Phil leaves her helpless to stand up to him. The inevitable result: Angie winds up with bruises all over her torso soon as he got home from the hospital.

Angela's helplessness, despite Patrick's intervention, brought crashing home how phony it was for my good guy to stop the bad guy and get the girl. If a woman is genuinely in love with an abusive person, all of God's angels and all of God's commands cannot separate the two.   Lehane's novel even made me finally open my eyes and see why my mother -a sensible, loving person- stayed with my abusive father for so long.  

So that dumb love story has wound up in mothballs destined for either extensive re-writes or deletion. However, while I must veer away from stories about guys rescuing women they love from abusive lovers, it does leave the field wide open for something else: Stories about sons with abusive fathers who take matters into their own hands and take their tormentors on. Those are not only plausible, but, as I found while writing this one, positively gripping when done right. 

So thank you, Dennis Lehane. Your terrific first Kenzie-Gennaro novel opened my eyes about things involving writing fiction. Has Lehane (or any other author you like) helped you with your fiction writing?

Image courtesy Hennepin County Library.