Christ, I love a good old-fashioned mobster story, and Dennis Lehane can tell a doozy. His 2012 novel “Live By Night”, a sequel to his 2008 novel “TheChrist, I love a good old-fashioned mobster story, and Dennis Lehane can tell a doozy. His 2012 novel “Live By Night”, a sequel to his 2008 novel “The Given Day”, has everything you want in a mob thriller—-Tommy guns, zoot suits, and hot dames. It also has something you won’t find in a lot of mob stories: an understanding of white privilege and the historically racist consequences of Prohibition.
Joe Coughlin is the youngest of the Boston Coughlins. Unlike his older brother, Danny, who was a cop and went out west to be a sheriff, Joe went the other way, into a life of crime. Pulling off bank robberies with aplomb with his two Italian partners, Joe makes the mistake of pulling a job on the gambling backroom of gangster Albert White. It’s not the money that White cares about. It’s the fact that Joe stole the heart of Albert’s moll, Emma Gould.
Joe finds himself on the run from the police and White’s thugs. Ending up in prison, Joe works out a deal with Maso Pescatore, a rival mob boss of White’s. Maso takes Joe on and sends him to Ybor, Florida, to run his rum-running business there. Joe flourishes, as does the rum-running business, thanks in no small part to Prohibition and because Joe knows how to deftly handle the many Cuban immigrants there, mainly by treating them with respect and as humans, something which the local white population of rich snobs and white supremacists don’t.
Joe falls in love with a Cuban woman, Graciela Suarez, who makes him rethink his life of crime. Does he really want to own the world? Or is greed worth a life of loneliness and constantly looking over one’s shoulder?
This book is as perfect as one can get: full of action, suspense, romance, and a beautiful sense of American history. The ‘20s may have been a roaring good time for the rich assholes, but for a large part of the population (i.e. non-white), America wasn’t kind.
I “read” this as an audiobook, narrated by Jim Frangione.
Supposedly, this was made into a film directed by and starring Ben Affleck. I have not seen it, for several reasons, but mainly because it was directed by and starring Ben Affleck....more
Cuba is a crime-writer's dream, replete with mysticism, a fascinating history, and an exotic backdrop for any kind of story, especially one involving Cuba is a crime-writer's dream, replete with mysticism, a fascinating history, and an exotic backdrop for any kind of story, especially one involving international espionage and murder.
Randy Wayne White's "North of Havana" reunites his hero, Doc Ford, with his Cold War-era past.
Ford, a marine biologist working in the Florida Everglades, was, unbeknownst to his friends and loved ones (a small group), once a top-secret government agent for the CIA. He doesn't talk about it, and he certainly doesn't like to remember much of it, but when his hippy-friend Tomlinson enters Cuban waters in his sail-boat and is taken into custody by Cuban soldiers, Ford is forced to confront his past and, worse, return to the country where he has a price on his head.
He arrives with a suitcase full of money (to pay off the police) and an ex-girlfriend who forced herself along for the ride. He expects a quick in-and-out, but when Tomlinson isn't where he's supposed to be, Ford ends up getting involved in an underground anti-Castro movement.
With the aid of an ex-Soviet agent still living in Havana, Ford goes on a search through the back-alleys and jungles of Cuba to find and rescue his friends. Along the way, he may actually finish the mission he started years ago but never completed: to kill Castro (who was, at the time this novel was set, in his 80s).
White is working in Robert Ludlum territory here (with a little John D. McDonald, for good measure), and for the most part, he does a good job of it. "North of Havana" is fast-paced, action-packed, suspenseful, and, more importantly, fun. Fans of Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiassen will enjoy White....more