Live by Night - (Joe Coughlin) by Dennis Lehane (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

From New York Times bestselling author Dennis Lehane comes this epic, unflinching tale of the making and unmaking of a gangster in the Prohibition Era of the Roaring Twenties--now a Warner Bros. movie starring Ben Affleck, Elle Fanning, Zoe Saldana, and Sienna Miller.

Meticulously researched and artfully told, Live by Night is the riveting story of one man's rise from Boston petty thief to the Gulf Coast's most successful rum runner, and it proves again that the accolades New York Times bestseller Lehane consistently receives are well deserved. He is indeed, "a master" (Philadelphia Inquirer) whose "true literary forefathers include John Steinbeck as well as Raymond Chandler" (Baltimore Sun). And, "Boy, does he know how to write" (Elmore Leonard).

From the Back Cover

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.

Review Quotes

"LIVE BY NIGHT is, first and foremost, a great story. But it is also proof positive that Lehane's 2008 novel, The Given Day, was no fluke--more than just a crime writer, Lehane is an author who works on a higher literary plane. . . . LIVE BY NIGHT is a morality tale in which, as one character notes, "No one's good, no one's bad." Except for the author, who once again shows just how good he is." - Minneapolis Star Tribune
"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)
"LIVE BY NIGHT belongs somewhere in a realm of Mario Puzo meets the Bible. It's a morality tale, but in keeping with the best of those, it's complex and layered and damnably entertaining, too." - New York Daily News
"LIVE BY NIGHT is Crime Noir 101, as taught by the best of its current practitioners. . . . Yet [Lehane's] idea of plain old crime is sophisticated, literary and barbed enough that it makes this book a sentence-by-sentence pleasure. You are in the hands of an expert. And you'll know it." - Janet Maslin, New York Times
"LIVE BY NIGHT is Crime Noir 101, as taught by the best of its current practitioners. . . . A sentence-by-sentence pleasure. You are in the hands of an expert. And you'll know it." - Janet Maslin, New York Times
"LIVE BY NIGHT transcends the familiar and assumes an unimpeachable reality of its own. . . . [A] meticulously crafted portrait of our violent national past." - Washington Post Book World
"Exquisitely plotted. . . . LIVE BY NIGHT is a masterful outing by an author known for superior storytelling." - South Florida Sun Sentinel
"Masterful. . . . Lehane has created a mature, quintessentially American story that will appeal to readers of literary and crime fiction alike." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Combining period detail from the Prohibition era with the depth of character and twists of plot that have won him such a devoted readership. . . . The novel builds to a powerful series of climaxes, following betrayal upon betrayal, which will satisfy Lehane's fans and deserves to extend his readership as well. Power, lust and moral ambiguity combine for an all-American explosion of fictional fireworks." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)