Great mystery series you may have missed

For those who like hard boiled private investigator mysteries, it doesn't get much better than Dennis Lehane's Patrick Kenzie & Angela Gennaro series. You may be familiar with a movie made from one of his books - the 2007 film Gone Baby Gone directed by Ben Affleck. It was a critical and commerical smash - but the books are even better. Here's how BookList describes the first book in the series, A Drink Before the War: "Play-rough, talk-tough Patrick Kenzie and smart, feisty Angie Gennaro don't take no lip from nobody when they're on a hot case, and their latest is hot all right. When two well-known U.S. senators ask Patrick and Angie to recover some confidential documents they believe were stolen from their office by cleaning woman Jenna Angeline, the detectives think their job will be a piece of cake: find the woman, tell the senators where she is, and let them take it from there. But of course, the case isn't that easy, and before they're finished, Patrick and Angie tackle gang warfare, corruption, prostitution, blackmail, and murder. Lehane offers slick, hip, sparkling dialogue that's as good as it gets, a plot that rockets along at warp speed, and the wonderfully original, in-your-face crime-solving duo of Kenzie and Gennaro."