Not a book I can really recommend. After the first 100 pages or so, I just started flipping though the rest of the pages and reading a bit here and there. I got the drift and don't think I missed anything too important. I was very disappointed in the end. The book started at the end but it didn't end at the end. In other words, you never find out why the character is in the predicament in which you find him at the start of the story, or if, in fact, he is actually in that predicament at all! The writing style made me tired-the author spends paragraph after paragraph telling us minutia that we don't really need to enjoy the story. I have read other things by Lehane that were much better than this one.

The book was okay – but not one of my favorites.

Will speak on Thursday, November 29 as part of the Author Talk Series http://www.bpl.org/news/author_series.htm

No heroes here but Lehane makes his ganster stars slightly more than one dimensional. I found the historical detail the most interesting part.

I should preface this by saying that I admire some of Mr. Lehane's previous work very much; his detective series and Mystic River are wonderful and his characters really do come alive. His past work clearly shows that he is a very talented writer. I bought a pre-publication advance copy of Live By Night at a yard sale a couple of weeks ago - and now I know why they got rid of it so quickly. I thought this book was truly awful. None of the characters rang true - not one - and neither did large portions of the story. Some of it was simply ridiculous - an example (spoiler alert): a 1930's explosive device the size of a 'child's shoe box' filled with 'ball bearings, brass doorknobs and gunpowder.' This bomb was built in a day by a person conveniently and almost-magically available, put in place by another wonderfully conveniently-situated person (but with no explosives experience), where it then blew a 30 ton (!) engine completely through the hull of a ship. This and several other implausible plot details and/or unbelievable coincidences really detracted from the story. Based on this book, I think Mr. Lehane is probably better suited to keeping his stories within a more contained, small-scale present-day universe rather than this attempt at a grand historical extravaganza. Read his other books instead.

This is not Lehane's best work.

Read after The Given Day

Pennie Clark Ianniciello, Costco's book buyer, has chosen Live by Night by Dennis Lehane ( as her pick of the month for October 2012.