3 movie deals prove author Lehane’s luck

Bookstores are lined with the works of novelists who’ve never seen their creations make it to the silver screen -- or who’ve been burned when they do.

So count Dennis Lehane among the doubly fortunate few.

First Clint Eastwood made a film classic out of the respected crime writer’s “Mystic River,” with that scorching, Oscar-winning performance by Sean Penn. Then Ben Affleck made his highly acclaimed directorial debut last month with “Gone Baby Gone.” Within days came word that Martin Scorsese would direct the author’s “Shutter Island” next year, with Leonardo DiCaprio in final talks to star.

With that last bit of fortuitous news, Lehane pronounces himself almost embarrassed.

“It’s egregious,” he muses. “I didn’t tell people. My fiancee said, ‘Why don’t you call people?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, let’s just pile it on!’ ”

So what’s Lehane’s explanation?

His talent is not, he insists, originality of plot, saying they “could be found on an episode of ‘CSI’ or ‘Law & Order.’ ” He’s merely happy to take credit for doing what he does very well, which is to write meaty, morally ambiguous, thought-provoking crime novels centered in the seamiest parts of Boston.

No, his explanation for his success is simpler: Pure luck. “I am just the luckiest . . . on the planet,” he says. “Because I’m Irish, I keep looking at the sky, waiting for it to fall.”

Hollywood observers will hasten to add that the Lehane recipe requires, in addition to luck and a generous helping of talent, a healthy serving of the maxim that success begets success.

“Everybody loves a winner, especially in Hollywood,” says film historian Leonard Maltin. “So when you start building a track record, people in the industry respond to that. They may not have even read the books. They’re trying to attract a top-level cast, and they know that the first one had a meaty dramatic role that led to an Oscar for Sean Penn.”

Still, Maltin allows, “It’s a pretty amazing trifecta of filmmakers to be attracted to one writer’s work. I don’t know how much precedent there is for it, if any. Especially so close together.”

Well before “Mystic River” was published in 2001, Lehane had a loyal following with his series of five detective novels featuring homegrown Boston private eye Patrick Kenzie and his girlfriend, Angie Gennaro.

They began with “A Drink Before the War” in 1994, but truly took off with the fourth, 1998’s “Gone, Baby, Gone,” a dark tale about an abducted child. (For the film, Ben Affleck took the commas out of the title and cast his brother, Casey Affleck, in the lead.)

“They’ve been huge sellers in our store,” says Otto Penzler, owner of the Mysterious Bookshop in New York City. “From his first book, he’s been one of the top writers in America in the crime novel genre, no question.”

Lehane should be judged by “the same standards you’d bring to any literature,” Penzler says. “He creates serious, real characters who have heart and are memorable, and his dialogue is absolutely believable.”

Indeed, all of Lehane’s novels (he just finished the eighth, a historical work called “The Given Day”) have been set in Boston, his hometown. He was born 41 years ago in the working-class neighborhood of Dorchester, the youngest of five children of Irish immigrants. His father worked in the shipping department of Sears, Roebuck & Co., his mother in a public school cafeteria.

After dropping out of college a couple of times, he found his calling, and sold “A Drink Before the War” while still in graduate school at Florida International University.

Then he moved back north. His $8,000 advance was not enough to quit his job as a parking valet at the Ritz-Carlton.

In 1997 Lehane had moved up to house chauffeur, and finally quit. “Gone, Baby, Gone” came out the next year -- a “career-changer,” Lehane says.

“After that book, I was suddenly living on good money,” Lehane says. But it was “Mystic River” in 2001 -- another supremely dark work about child abuse, murder and people doing the wrong thing -- that propelled him to the bestseller lists.

What made Lehane so interested in the darkest aspects of humanity? He cites his work just after college counseling damaged children.

“I saw levels of abuse that truly shocked me,” he says. “It gave me a kind of moral fury.”