By William Saunderson-Meyer for the Sunday Times
World Gone By
Dennis Lehane (Little, Brown)
*****
“Before the small war broke them apart,” writes Lehane, “they all gathered to support the big war.”
It’s 1942 and in the port city of Tampa, Florida, the cream of local society, both legitimate and criminal — the two tend to blend in Tampa — is assembled at a black-tie fundraiser to support the troops. Six months later a crime beat reporter shuffling through photos of the occasion reflects that many of the notables assembled at that soiree are either dead or damned, consumed by the explosion of gangster violence that engulfed the city soon after.
Thus opens World Gone By, third in a loose trilogy of novels that trace the times of Joseph “Boston Joe” Coughlin, the ex-convict and rum runner who was introduced in The Given Day, and whose bloody rise to power as a Mob boss was chronicled in Live By Night.
Joe hasn’t exactly gone straight, but he has gone respectable. His personal criminal empire is no more and he has put violence behind him, serving as consigliere, adviser, to the local crime syndicate.
It’s a position, removed from the fray, which has made him seemingly untouchable. He has been so successful at making money for everyone else that he has no apparent enemies.
His semi-retirement affords him time aplenty to take care of his 10-year-old son, Tomas, a sensitive youngster whose mother was murdered in a gangland hit while he was an infant. And while Joe still fiercely mourns the death of his wife, he has also seized the opportunity to embark on a passionate and dangerous affair with the mayor’s heiress wife.
But true peace is illusory in a world carved from such violence. On the evening of the fundraiser, he spots a young boy in old-fashioned clothes, a ghost, who lays a cold hand of premonition on Joe. Then comes the rumour that there is a contract out on him and that the assassin will carry out the deed in a fortnight, on Ash Wednesday.
Lehane’s narrative sweeps the reader towards the Ash Wednesday deadline with the power of one of those Florida hurricanes that regularly devastate Florida’s coastline. In the eye of the storm, Joe Coughlin tries to salvage what is precious to him, his son and his lover. He tries to hold true to personal loyalties, his childhood friend and now boss, Dion Bartolo.
He is painfully aware, however, that his loves and loyalties may not be reconcilable and that sacrifices may have to be made. As he puts it in answer to his son’s tremulous question as to whether he is a “bad guy”, after the boy witnesses Joe shoot dead a man who had attacked them: “No, just not a particularly good one.”
Lehane defies pigeonholing. The trilogy that this title is part of sweeps with swashbuckling panache through the history of the American underworld, but he is not a historical novelist. Nor is he simply a thriller writer, although World Gone By is noir fiction of great suspense. One thing is certain, though: Lehane is a five-star storyteller.
Follow William Saunderson-Meyer on Twitter @TheJaundicedEye
Book details
- World Gone By by Dennis Lehane
EAN: 9781408706701
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