In college, Lehane learned how to write. "John Dufresne is one of the great writing teachers," he says. "Dufresne calls fiction 'the lie that tells the truth.' " Although Lehane doesn't say so, it's clear that, after an extended writing apprenticeship with the Kensie/Gennaro series, it was in Mystic River that he at last fully embraced Dufresne's dictum to tell the truthincluding the traumatic truth of the emotional aftermath of his own difficult youththrough fiction.