By Matthew Gavin, Culture Editor -

Dennis Lehane knows Boston like only a native can. Born and raised in Dorchester, he is renowned for us­ing the blue-collar haunts of the Bay State as locale for his stories of crime and gritty realism. After winning a Shamus Award for private eye fiction with his debut novel, A Drink Before the War, he went on to pen a slew of critically acclaimed stories set against such backdrops as the Boston Police Strike of 1919 to modern-day gentri­fication.

The fourth book of his Kenzie-Gennaro series, “Gone, Baby, Gone,” was adapted into a feature film di­rected by Ben Affleck, and his best­selling novel of friendship and tragic loss, Mystic River, served as the basis for Clint Eastwood’s Academy Award winning drama. His psychological thriller, Shutter Island, is his third novel to be brought to the big screen, this time by Martin Scorsese, and is due for release in February of next year. Most recently, he served as the edi­tor and contributor to a collection of short stories, titled Boston Noir, that are set in different neighborhoods of the city and giving the convention­alized drama their own hometown treatment.

With the anthology scheduled to hit bookstores in early November, Lehane took the time to discuss his works and influences via e-mail, and how Boston’s stories have become as complex and diverse as the city itself.

MG: What separates Boston Noir from the traditional conventions associated with noir stories and crime fiction?

DL: For starters, one would hope it leaves behind the creakier conventions of the genre—the he-men in Fedoras and tough-talking molls — but I’m fairly certain few writers traffic in that anymore, except really bad ones.

MG: How have social history and changing demographics influenced the way stories are told about Bos­ton?

DL: Boston’s no longer easily classified as simply a city comprised of Brahmin strong­holds vs. the Irish ones. That may be the Boston I knew and grew up in, but it’s a vanishing world these days. And the world that has replaced it is so much more diverse and interesting in a lot of ways. That’s the world that’s being written about in these stories.

MG: What films and novels come to mind when you think about Boston and what makes the city such an at­tractive setting for these stories?

DL: The Friends of Eddie Coyle is, for me, the benchmark. That’s the Boston movie and even though it was made 35 years ago, it still holds up. Amazing piece of work. Another one I love, that is criminally ignored, is Ted Demme’s “Monument Ave.” Removing my contribution entirely, I’d argue that Ben Affleck’s “Gone Baby Gone” is a quintessentially Boston movie. He brought things to that film than no outsider could have. It reeks of Boston, and particularly of the new Boston we discussed above. As for what makes the city and attractive set­ting to filmmakers, I’d say the tax breaks don’t hurt. And it’s a visually distinctive city, (though I propose a ten-year morato­rium on any swooping shots of the Longfel­low Bridge.) I think because of “The De­parted,” and maybe, yes, my work to some extent, Hollywood sees it as a great place to do Irish gangster movies, but I’m not sure the shark hasn’t already been jumped on that sub-sub-genre.

MG: You’ve now had two novels brought to the screen with Mystic Riv­er and Gone, Baby, Gone. With Martin Scorcese’s adaptation of Shutter Island due for release in February and the rights for The Given Day optioned to Sam Raimi, what is it that you think draws filmmakers to your stories?

DL: Part of it is just being the flavor of the month. Two really good movies have been made out of my source material so in Hollywood they assume that means I’ve got a magic touch. No one stops to consider I could just be lucky. What certainly gets lost in the shuffle is the one thing all three adaptations of my work have shared in common—they were all made in the best sense of the auteur theory. Clint Eastwood and Brian Helgeland shepherded Mystic River from zygote to locked-script stage without an ounce of studio interference. Ben Affleck and Aaron Stockard did the same with Gone Baby Gone. And then Martin Scorsese and Laeta Kalogridis con­trolled all creative decisions about Shutter Island. No suits, no focus groups, nothing but professionals left to do their magic with­out interference.

MG: What do you see for the future of Boston in literature and film?

DL: I don’t prognosticate. Ain’t my thing. Whatever will be, will be.

MG: How do the short stories in the anthology characterize both the neighborhoods and city they represent?

DL: Each story represents a different neighborhood. Because we’re all individual writers with very different takes on the city — Itabari Neri’s Roxbury is not Don Lee’s Cambridge which is not John Dufresne’s Southie — the depiction of the city as a whole is much more varied than if you’d seen it through the eyes of one writer. Which is really the point.

MG: While crime is an underlying motif throughout your works, they are also character driven and illustrate social contexts. What makes crime a useful lens in fiction?

DL: If you believe, as I do, that most human struggle through the ages can be distilled to an issue of the haves vs. the have-nots and you accept that we are currently living in a new Gilded Age, which is possibly more egregious in its disparity of wealth than the previous one, then setting stories in the neighborhoods we drive over on sleek new highways yields endless dramatic possibilities.

MG: What novels have most influenced you as a writer?

DL: The Wanderers and Clockers by Richard Price

Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game by William Kennedy

The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

God’s Pocket by Pete Dexter

MG: How is Shutter Island different from your other work?

DL: Well, it’s a gothic for one. It’s an elegy to the Bronte sisters and Mary Shelley and B movies from the 1940s and 1950s. It’s about as far afield from the world of Patrick Kenzie or Mystic River as I could get, so I guess I’d say it’s pretty different.

MG: What are you working on now?

DL: The sixth Patrick Kenzie novel. He’s been gone eleven years so it’s fun to see what he’s up to again.