Live By Night by Little Brown - Historical Crime Novel for Book Clubs & Reading Enthusiasts

What a fine book!Lehane has written many excellent novels -- most obviously, Mystic River -- but this stands out for me as his best. It works at many levels. The most obvious is the Godfather motifs of how a boy seems destined for a life of professional crime where betrayal and violence are the everyday routine. It has a fairly straightforward narrative drive that is compelling but not in itself what raises it to poignancy and depth. It is for me basically about the search for meaning in a meaningless world. It is a tableau of psychotics that Joe, the shrewd and lethal manipulator, first survives in and comes to dominate. He creeps rather than claws his way to near the top of the gangboss fraternity and there is plenty of very brutal and often disturbing twists in his story.At the next level above a thud and blunder crime story is the soulless hardening of Joe and his and most of the characters near-nihilistic view of life. It is constantly tempered by a wish for something more and a belief that, again very-Godfatheresque,this is the life they chose and that chose them; that's the way it is and will be. The tempering force, convincingly woven into the plot, is a false love and a true one. Emma, the elusive waif who is as hard as hard can be, and knows it. For her, love is a nothing, a void. For Joe it is a strange and near pointless emotion in a world where that has no place.Graciela is the flamboyant Cuban exile who points to redemption. He meets her in Tampa, after he is released from a harrowing and brutal jail term in Boston, where he has to survive near-certain death by the day. Joe and Graciela come together and it is the counterbalance of what she and Joe can build for each other that gives some sense of meaning that grows subtly and as inexorably as did the imprisonment of Joe's soul. It ends in a mix of the violence and betrayals that mark the path of just about every character, and also a quietus.It's rare that a book can combine these strands so well. Lehane writes very clearly and directly. He structures the plot well. It drives forward and is always engaging. The style is plain but not dry. There are some coincidences that are a little unlikely but these are not obtrusive.I finished reading it with a sense of immense respect for Lehane's craftsmanship but also found the story surprisingly moving. Other reviews provide excellent detail about the details of the novel. My own aims only to offer an opinion on the elements that to me make it far more than the sum of its pages. It matches Mystic River in its many facets of texture, theme and evocation.Unreservedly recommended