Live by Night

⚖The case for it

Joe Coughlin moves from Depression-era Boston gangster to Prohibition-era Florida rum runner. Lehane's historical crime epic achieves the scope of The Godfather while examining the violence of American capitalism through the criminal's perspective. Edgar Award winner, 2013. Lehane's ambition to be an American novelist, not just a crime writer, fully realized.

— the canon

✕The case against

Joe Coughlin is a gangster the book keeps insisting is decent, ordering deaths in one chapter and brooding handsomely about them in the next; Lehane wants the rum and the absolution both. The Boston opening crackles, the long Ybor City middle settles into montage, and Graciela exists mainly to certify Joe's conscience.

— the honest librarian