Rating: ****
Tags: Suspense, Lang:en
Summary
Boston, 1926. The '20s are roaring. Liquor is flowing,
bullets are flying, and one man sets out to make his mark on
the world. Prohibition has given rise to an endless network of
underground distilleries, speakeasies, gangsters, and corrupt
cops. Joe Coughlin, the youngest son of a prominent Boston
police captain, has long since turned his back on his strict
and proper upbringing. Now having graduated from a childhood
of petty theft to a career in the pay of the city's most
fearsome mobsters, Joe enjoys the spoils, thrills, and
notoriety of being an outlaw. But life on the dark side carries a heavy price. In a time
when ruthless men of ambition, armed with cash, illegal
booze, and guns, battle for control, no one—neither
family nor friend, enemy nor lover—can be trusted.
Beyond money and power, even the threat of prison, one fate
seems most likely for men like Joe: an early death. But until
that day, he and his friends are determined to live life to
the hilt. Joe embarks on a dizzying journey up the ladder of
organized crime that takes him from the flash of Jazz Age
Boston to the sensual shimmer of Tampa's Latin Quarter to the
sizzling streets of Cuba.
Live by Night is a riveting epic layered with a
diverse cast of loyal friends and callous enemies, tough
rumrunners and sultry femmes fatales, Bible-quoting
evangelists and cruel Klansmen, all battling for survival and
their piece of the American dream. At once a sweeping love
story and a compelling saga of revenge, it is a spellbinding
tour de force of betrayal and redemption, music and murder,
that brings fully to life a bygone era when sin was cause for
celebration and vice was a national virtue.
Amazon Best Books of the Month, October
2012: The story might sound a bit familiar: A
cop’s son falls in with bad guys and becomes one. But
in Lehane’s hands, the Prohibition-era tale of Joe
Coughlin’s rise to criminal power is both fresh and
nuanced, packed with guns, booze, and babes as it roars from
Boston to Tampa to Cuba. As Coughlin crosses deeper into the
dark side--among those who “live by night and dance
fast”--he provokes the question that sustains this
propulsive narrative: Can a man be a good mobster and a good
person at the same time? Incredibly, Lehane, who becomes more
masterful with each book, has us rooting for Coughlin even as
he slowly becomes the kind of monster mobster he once reviled
and rebelled against. --
Neal Thompson
“Lehane’s novel carves its own unique place in
the Prohibition landscape. . . . This is an utterly magnetic
novel on every level, a reimagining of the great themes of
popular fiction—crime, family, passion,
betrayal—set against an exquisitely rendered historical
backdrop.” (Booklist (starred review) )
“Masterful. . . . Lehane has created a mature,
quintessentially American story that will appeal to readers
of literary and crime fiction alike.” (Publishers
Weekly (starred review) )Amazon.com Review
Review