Just Finished Reading Dennis Lehane's Live By Night

When I checked out Dennis Lehane's 2012 gangster novel Live By Night from my library, I foolishly didn't first see whether it was in the middle of a series...well, turns out it's the second book in his Coughlin crime series.  Fortunately, though, this story was very well-contained and I feel that I didn't miss too much by skipping book #1, which is titled The Given Day...

The setting for Live By Night changes from Boston to Tampa to Cuba, during the Prohibition-era '20s and '30s and then the first few years following its repeal.  The protagonist is Joe Coughlin, the youngest son of a Boston police captain who from early on has chosen the life of organized crime, much to his father's dismay.  Joe finds himself caught in the middle of a war between booze-smuggling crime families while at the same time he has fallen for the mistress of his chief enemy.  In a heist, someone double-crosses him, he is arrested, and sent to prison...where he comes under the influence of Maso Pescatore, a powerful crime boss.  Joe eventually gets released and Pescatore employs him as the head of his Tampa operations.  But maybe I've already said too much...after all, part of the enjoyment of reading a book of this type is all of its plot twists and turns: you never know what will happen next when you turn the page...

Joe Coughlin could best be described as a gangster with a conscience, which is a concept I find difficult to accept.  Yet somehow Lehane makes him a sympathetic character all the way through the story, believable or not.  I honestly didn't enjoy Live By Night all that much, but it did give me a better sense about what all was going on during the brief Prohibition period in our country's history.  After finishing it, I discovered that it was adapted to film last year, the movie starring Ben Affleck.  The third book in this series has been out for a couple of years...

Dennis Lehane also wrote Mystic River and Shutter Island, two more stories with movie counterparts.  Maybe I'll try one or both of these sometime in the near future...