WRITER

Dennis Lehane

1965 - Today

Photo of Dennis Lehane

Icon of person Dennis Lehane

Dennis Lehane (born August 4, 1965) is an American author. He has published more than a dozen novels; the first several were a series of mysteries featuring recurring characters, including A Drink Before the War. Four of his novels have been adapted into films of the same names: Clint Eastwood's Mystic River (2003), Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island (2010), and Gone Baby Gone (2007) and Live by Night (2016), both directed by Ben Affleck. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Dennis Lehane has received more than 2,019,523 page views. His biography is available in 33 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 32 in 2019). Dennis Lehane is the 3,505th most popular writer (up from 3,685th in 2019), the 4,487th most popular biography from United States (up from 4,920th in 2019) and the 373rd most popular American Writer.

Memorability Metrics

  • 2.0M

    Page Views (PV)

  • 51.55

    Historical Popularity Index (HPI)

  • 33

    Languages Editions (L)

  • 5.01

    Effective Languages (L*)

  • 3.27

    Coefficient of Variation (CV)

Notable Works

Mystic river
Mystery, Murder, Male friendship
Gone, Baby, Gone
Fiction, Patrick Kenzie (Fictitious character), Private investigators
Prayers for rain
Fiction, Patrick Kenzie (Fictitious character), Private investigators
The master of the new noir, Dennis Lehane delivers a shattering tale of evil, depravity, and justice that captures the dark realism of Boston’s gritty blue-collar streets.Private Investigator Patrick Kenzie wants to know why a former client, a perky woman in love with life, could, within six months, jump naked from a Boston landmark -- the final fall in a spiral of self-destruction. What he finds is a sadistic stalker who targeted the young woman and methodically drove her to her death. A monster the law can’t touch. But Kenzie can. He and his former partner, Angela Gennaro, will fight a mind-twisting battle against this psychopath even as he turns his tricks on them.
A drink before the war
Patrick Kenzie (Fictitious character), Private investigators, Angela Gennaro (Fictitious character)
Shutter Island
Mystery, Mentally ill, Escapes
Shutter Island
United States marshals, Fiction, Psychiatric hospital patients
U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels and his partner, Chuck Aule, come to Shutter Island's Ashcliffe Hospital in search of an escaped mental patient, but uncover true wickedness as Ashcliffe's mysterious patient treatments propel them to the brink of insanity.
Prayers for rain
Fiction, Patrick Kenzie (Fictitious character), Private investigators
The master of the new noir, Dennis Lehane delivers a shattering tale of evil, depravity, and justice that captures the dark realism of Boston’s gritty blue-collar streets.Private Investigator Patrick Kenzie wants to know why a former client, a perky woman in love with life, could, within six months, jump naked from a Boston landmark -- the final fall in a spiral of self-destruction. What he finds is a sadistic stalker who targeted the young woman and methodically drove her to her death. A monster the law can’t touch. But Kenzie can. He and his former partner, Angela Gennaro, will fight a mind-twisting battle against this psychopath even as he turns his tricks on them.
Gone, Baby, Gone
Fiction, Patrick Kenzie (Fictitious character), Private investigators
PI Patrick Kenzie is hired to find a four-year-old girl, abducted while the mother was out drinking. The search takes Kenzie through Boston's underworld of drug dealers, kidnapers and pedophiles.
Mystic river
Mystery, Murder, Male friendship
When they were children, Sean Devine, Jimmy Marcus, and Dave Boyle were friends. But then a strange car pulled up to their street. One boy got into the car, two did not, and something terrible happened -- something that ended their friendship and changed all three boys forever. Twenty-five years later, Sean is a homicide detective. Jimmy is an ex-con who owns a corner store. And Dave is trying to hold his marriage together and keep his demons at bay -- demons that urge him to do terrible things. When Jimmy's daughter is found murdered, Sean is assigned to the case. His investigation brings him into conflict with Jimmy, who finds his old criminal impulses tempt him to solve the crime with brutal justice. And then there is Dave, who came home the night Jimmy's daughter died covered in someone else's blood. A tense and unnerving psychological thriller, Mystic River is also an epic novel of love and loyalty, faith and family, in which people irrevocably marked by the past find themselves on a collision course with the darkest truths of their own hidden selves.
Darkness, take my hand
Patrick Kenzie (Fictitious character), Mystery, Private investigators
The master of the new noir, Dennis Lehane magnificently evokes the dignity and savagery of working-class Boston in this terrifying tale of darkness and redemption. Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro's latest client is a prominent Boston psychiatrist running scared from a vengeful Irish mob. The private investigators know something about cold-blooded retribution. Born and bred on the mean streets of blue-collar Dorchester, they've seen the darkness that lives in the hearts of the unfortunate. But an evil for which even they are unprepared is about to strike as secrets long-dormant erupt, setting off a chain of violent murders that will stain everything—including the truth.
The Given Day
Literature, Psychological fiction, Fiction
Set in Boston at the end of the First World War, New York Times bestselling author Dennis Lehane's long-awaited eighth novel unflinchingly captures the political and social unrest of a nation caught at the crossroads between past and future. Filled with a cast of unforgettable characters more richly drawn than any Lehane has ever created, The Given Day tells the story of two families — one black, one white — swept up in a maelstrom of revolutionaries and anarchists, immigrants and ward bosses, Brahmins and ordinary citizens, all engaged in a battle for survival and power. Beat cop Danny Coughlin, the son of one of the city's most beloved and powerful police captains, joins a burgeoning union movement and the hunt for violent radicals. Luther Laurence, on the run after a deadly confrontation with a crime boss in Tulsa, works for the Coughlin family and tries desperately to find his way home to his pregnant wife.Here, too, are some of the most influential figures of the era — Babe Ruth; Eugene O'Neill; leftist activist Jack Reed; NAACP founder W. E. B. DuBois; Mitchell Palmer, Woodrow Wilson's ruthless Red-chasing attorney general; cunning Massachusetts governor Calvin Coolidge; and an ambitious young Department of Justice lawyer named John Hoover.Coursing through some of the pivotal events of the time — including the Spanish Influenza pandemic — and culminating in the Boston Police Strike of 1919, The Given Day explores the crippling violence and irrepressible exuberance of a country at war with, and in the thrall of, itself. As Danny, Luther, and those around them struggle to define themselves in increasingly turbulent times, they gradually find family in one another and, together, ride a rising storm of hardship, deprivation, and hope that will change all their lives.

Among WRITERS

Among writers, Dennis Lehane ranks 3,505 out of 7,302Before him are Bonaventure des Périers, Hafez Ibrahim, Yang Jiang, Hulda Garborg, Filip Višnjić, and William Cowper. After him are Gonzalo de Berceo, Martin Gray, Adrienne Rich, Theodor Körner, Giuseppe Parini, and Léo Malet.

Most Popular Writers in Wikipedia

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1965, Dennis Lehane ranks 127Before him are Mikhail Prokhorov, Shinji Mikami, Rachida Dati, Kevin McCarthy, Peter Krause, and Rob Pilatus. After him are Vincent Regan, Dominik Hašek, Rob Zombie, Aljoša Asanović, Silas Pereira, and Tomáš Skuhravý.

Others Born in 1965

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In United States

Among people born in United States, Dennis Lehane ranks 4,487 out of 20,380Before him are Donald Byrd (1932), Edward Condon (1902), Tom Atkins (1935), Jon Polito (1950), Randall Duk Kim (1943), and Vincent Pastore (1946). After him are Catherine Hicks (1951), Nathan Lane (1956), Adrienne Rich (1929), Bryce DeWitt (1923), Lorraine Gary (1937), and Andrew Tate (1986).

Among WRITERS In United States

Among writers born in United States, Dennis Lehane ranks 373Before him are Bell hooks (1952), H.D. (1886), Octavia E. Butler (1947), Gary Snyder (1930), Jonathan Littell (1967), and Jeff Lindsay (1952). After him are Adrienne Rich (1929), Sara Teasdale (1884), Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892), Kim Stanley Robinson (1952), Donald Barthelme (1931), and Howard Pyle (1853).