Micro review: ‘Since We Fell’ is a tantalizing domestic noir

Dennis Lehane, author of the ground-breaking psychological thrillers and , brings to us his recent white-knuckle domestic noir, . Focussing on the central character Rachel Childs, it is Lehane’s first story told from a woman’s point of view. follows the tormented psyche of Rachel, a television journalist, who also happens to the daughter of celebrity author Elizabeth Childs.
Rachel Childs is a complicated character, most of it an amalgamation of her original traits and inherited attributes from her cold and distant mother. Elizabeth damages the child Rachel just enough by asking her to delete her father completely out of her life when he plans to leave them. Soon after, Rachel loses her mother as well. The novel then revolves around Rachel’s effort to come to terms with herself and with the idea of being around men, which leads her to a warlord in a Haitian refugee camp and the horrors she can’t wash off -- her first cold and distant husband; and then to her second, Brian. begins by Rachel shooting Brain and the rest of it is an unfolding of her past and present through unpredictable transitions.
The title “Since We Fell” is a play on the ballad song “Since I Fell For You”, which laments the entrapment of a hopeless lover addicted to someone who will ultimately bring out his destruction. The song perfectly underlines the emotional upheavals in Rachel’s mind and brings in a diabolical undertone to her story. With the use of a gripping narrative technique and effortless language, Dennis Lehane creates a sinister atmosphere, so dark and placid that the novel instantly becomes another script for a blockbuster thriller. is a thrilling account of mysterious happenings revolving around a tormented woman, full of plot twists and a racy pace.

writes in , “Lehane, is, as ever, a graceful writer, observant of the world that shapes his characters’ lives.”
in a review for writes, “He (Dennis Lehane) remains one of the great, diabolical thriller kings who seems intimately acquainted with darkness and can make it seep from the page or screen”.
writes in , “Lehane, a crime writer fully the equal of more ostensibly literary authors, reveals in a single novel the fault-lines between entertainment and seriousness, distraction and attention.”
Dennis Lehane's "Since We Fell" is a New York Times and USA Today bestseller.