Live By Night

In Prohibition-era Boston, Joe Coughlin is a police commander’s son who has taken up armed robbery with his friends. A chance encounter with a gangster’s moll develops into a relentless obsession, and a heist gone wrong plunges Joe deep into underworld intrigue.

In this follow-up to The Given Day, Dennis Lehane picks up several years after that book left off. The Boston police strike is long over, and the focus has shifted from disillusioned police officer Danny to younger brother Joe. While Lehane continues to show a flair for capturing time and place, Live By Night lacks the grandeur and gravitas of its predecessor.

A lot of the letdown is rooted in perspective. The Given Day gave us a look at the historical landscape through the eyes of several characters (including, at times, Babe Ruth). In Live By Night, we briefly venture into the mind of Coughlin patriarch Thomas but are otherwise with Joe for the duration. He isn’t a weak character, thankfully: his smart mouth, determination, and aversion to bloodshed liken him to recurring Lehane narrator Patrick Kenzie, and his morally ambiguous quest to build a good life through wicked means is worth following. However, by focusing narrowly on Joe’s journey, the book loses its ability to cast a wider net. This is the story of a man, not of an age, and its simplicity is a bit disappointing.

Beyond that, there’s a certain slickness and neatness to the narrative that occasionally becomes grating. Joe is a little too lucky in his exploits, forgotten characters reappear a little too conveniently, and the dialogue is, at times, a little too poetic. Witnessing antagonistic Boston gangster Albert White talk about love and bemoan his own villainy is quite hard to swallow.

These lapses aside, Lehane continues to masterfully handle plot and setting. The first section of the book is taut and filled with danger. Shootouts, betrayal, and police brutality all figure prominently, and the violence reaches a dark crescendo in a prison attack. By the time the action moves to Tampa, the pace slackens considerably. This is not a liability, though: it gives Lehane time to introduce us to the diverse, sweltering Ybor City neighborhood, a haven for Cuban revolutionaries and northern gangsters alike. For as well as Lehane does Boston, the change of pace here is refreshing.

As a standalone adventure, Live By Night is a perfectly serviceable look at a crook who longs to be anything but. As a continuation of a saga, however, it fails to live up to the promise of its predecessor.

7.5/10