Live By Night

I heard Dennis Lehane talk about his new novel, Live By Night, while I was in Boston in late May. Since its story sounded interesting, and since I liked the movies based on his earlier novels (Gone Baby Gone, Mystic River, Shutter Island), I thought I’d read his latest novel. Unfortunately, it’s not very good.

The novel, set in Boston during Prohibition, is about the son of a cop who rebels by associating with Irish mobsters. Joe then rises in this underworld until he challenges for control of the lucrative liquor-smuggling business. I can’t imagine that it ends well for him.

You’ve undoubtedly noticed that the previous sentence is inconclusive, as if I’m writing this review without having finished the novel. That’s true.

Since I’m a big fan of gangster films set in the 1920s, as well as the current HBO series Boardwalk Empire, this should be a story that I enjoy reading, but I found the characters wooden and one-dimensional, the writing trite, and the plot predictable. There’s simply no depth anywhere, no complexity. Perhaps I’ve simply seen too many gangster films, or perhaps the genre is exhausted, but I couldn’t get past the mid-point of this novel.

And since life’s too short to read boring novels, I put Live By Night in some cement shoes and then made a midnight visit to the nearest lake.