IT’S MY GANGSTER BOOK,” Beantown novelist Dennis Lehane told The Boston Globe of his new book, Live by Night. “Since I was a little kid, it was my dream to write a gangster book, and this is it.” And why not? Lehane has set his fiction everywhere from a 1950s mental asylum in the wonderfully creepy Shutter Island to modern-day ruins like the slums in Mystic River. Prohibition-era America seems as excellent a choice as any for his variety of dark tale. Unfortunately, Live by Night is not a prickly, tight Lehanean crime-thriller. Lehane is usually notable for his tautly constructed plots; pull at the threads of any character or deftly positioned detail and a devilish scheme unfolds.
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