It’s the summer of 1974 in Boston and enforced busing will begin when school starts in the fall. It seems that no one in Mary Pat Fennessy’s neighborhood is happy about it. One night her teenage daughter, Jules, doesn’t return home from a night of drinking and partying. That same night a young Black man dies, perhaps from being struck by a subway train. Mary Pat astutely senses that the two events are related and thus searches for answers as well as the people involved in the man’s death and her daughter’s disappearance.

What I liked best about Small Mercies is that it is not just a” who done it” mystery, Lehane captures the anger and prejudice of the poor Irish of Boston, the long arm of the Irish Mafia, the tension created when people must involuntarily bus their children and the determination and monomania of Mary Pat Fennessy.