Dublin is currently witnessing a very bloody feud between two rival drug gangs, which to date has claimed 5 lives since last September, including that of an innocent man in what is being thought to have been a case of mistaken identity. Not that the perpetrator is going to feel any sense of remorse, murder is murder. The so called hit-men carrying out these murders are drug addicts themselves, doing anything to pay off a debt, score a hit or at least stay in the good books of the gang leader. But this is not something unique to Dublin, every major city the world over and down through history has had a problem with gangsters…. Before narcotics became such a booming industry, they dealt in other vices and contraband, such as sex, gambling and in the US especially, alcohol during the prohibition. This brings us to this month’s book group read, its Live by Night by Dennis Lehane.
Joe Coughlin comes from a good Irish – American family, in 1920’s Boston. Aged nineteen he and couple of friends hold up an illegal poker game, that’s when he meets Emma Gould, the hostess at the game. He falls for her instantly, but she’s also the Moll of a local gangster Albert White. When their next heist goes wrong and two cops die, Joe hides the money he is holding and then flees the city but not before taking Emma with him. Unfortunately, they run into Albert, whose men beat Joe to within an inch of his life. He’s only saved from certain death by the arrival of his Police Commissioner Dad and a large number of the Boston PD. He is sent to jail for the murder of the two cops. Inside he comes under the protection of Mafioso Tommaso Pescatore, from then on he starts on the road to becoming a leading figure in the mafia. On his release he goes to where he hid the money, but it’s gone and he’d given the location to Emma just before the run in with White and his men. She was last seen leaving with one of Albert’s men. Can Joe find Emma? His money? Will he get revenge on Albert White for the beating?
When we discussed this book at book group, I was surprised by a number of the group who said it was violent and they felt uncomfortable reading it. One person said they had to stop for fear of being desensitized!!!! Myself and others argued that there are more violent books out there and we see much more dramatic stuff on TV. They told the group they avoid these types of books and programmes for the same reason.
If we were all to stop reading crime fiction tomorrow for fear that it will have an effect on our moral compass, then a lot of excellent writers would suddenly find themselves out of work. The same goes for cops and pathologist, how do they deal with the sights they see on a daily basis? They learn to switch off. They use mortuary humour and that’s not desensitizing, its coping. Crime fiction is what it says on the proverbial tin. Fiction!!!! If you feel the material is too graphic it’s down to two things a) the writer’s skill and b) your excellent imagination.
Another member said the women portrayed in the book were just being used… well they were mainly prostitutes. This is what the mafia did back then and still do these days, ran brothels. I don’t know what that contributor was expecting to find in something set in the 1920’s underworld? Women like those in Sex In The City?
Yes, the book is violent but no more than you’d expect from a work of fiction dealing with the subject matter. If you’re expecting Cecelia Ahern or Beatrix Potter you’ve opened the wrong book.
Dennis Lehane
I found the book to be a gripping and excellently written crime drama from one of America’s leading crime writers. It tracks Coughlin’s life from the streets of Boston and the wit shredding life in jail, to his new life as a bootlegger, rum runner and eventual heavy weight gangster in the steamy tropics of Florida and Cuba, without any loss of pace or tension. The book is in the similar style as those early works of Jeffery Archer such as Kane and Abel, The Prodigal Daughter and First Among Equals.
This is the first Dennis Lehane I’d read, although I’d seen the Film of Gone Baby Gone. While my Fiancé has been trying to get me to watch Shutter Island for a couple of years now and Mystic River is on my watch list too.
Published in 2012 by William Morrow / Harper Collins (www.harpercollins.com ) Live by
Ben Affleck – On Set
Night is the eleventh of thirteen books American author Lehane has written to date. Born and raised in Boston, he still lives there and sets most of his books there. His first six books featured the protagonists Kenzie and Genaro. While Live by Night is the second book in a Trilogy that follows the lives of the Coughlin Clan, the other two are The Given Day (2008) and World Gone By (2015). The film adaptation is due for release in 2017 starring Ben Affleck as Coughlin, Robert Glenister as White, Sienna Miller as Emma Gould and Brendan Gleeson as his dad. He’s also written for the TV series The Wire, while the movie The Drop was based on a short story of his.
So if you feel your nerves can stand an excellently written crime thriller, then get down to your local bookshop or download a copy and with summer starting make its first warm rays felt on our cheeks, this book and the other two in its trilogy should make excellent holiday reading.
The Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko was murdered in London in October 2006, when his tea was spiked with Polonium 210, a highly poisonous radioactive isotope. Earlier this year the British government published the findings of the inquiry into his murder, it found the order to kill him most probably came from Vladimir Putin himself. The murder has all the hallmarks of a scene from a leading spy thriller. Among other mysterious political deaths in London over the years, was the murder by the KGB of Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov in 1978, while he waited at a bus-stop. Then the killer used a poison tipped umbrella filled with Ricin. What these two incidents prove among other things is that nothing is impossible and in the world of Thriller writing, life can oh so very easily imitate art. This brings us on to this month’s book which is Hunt for The Enemy by Rob Sinclair published by Clink Street (
“IRISHMAN AND IRISHWOMEN: In the name of god and the dead generations from which she receives her old traditions of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom…” The opening lines of the proclamation read by Patrick Pearse from the steps of the General Post Office in Dublin on Easter Monday 1916.
to join the Royal Dublin Fusiliers. For Willie it’s the chance to don a uniform – “if he can’t be a policeman, he can be a soldier” – and to gain his father’s approval.
highly implausibly, Willie is called up to take part in a battle against the insurgents while on his way back from brief leave in Dublin. Even without this clumsy episode, Willie’s experiences at the front could not fail but to prompt questions about his own identity and sense of belonging: One of his company is executed for refusing to fight in a British uniform in protest at the killings back home; English officers treat him with disdain because he is Irish; ‘fellow’ soldiers regard “the Irish” as suspect. In effect, Willie and his Irish comrades are good for cannon fodder, but can’t really be trusted.
robably aware that Diabetes has been in the news recently owing to the announcement that researchers have successfully implanted insulin producing cells into mice. Thus taking large steps toward curing this debilitating disease which affects 6% of the worlds adult population. According to the website 
Imagine you’re living on the outskirts of a small rural village or in an isolated farmstead – in Nazi occupied Norway, north of the Artic circle. On a bitterly cold, dark, mid-winter evening there’s a knock on your door. You open it to find a wounded and disheveled stranger, close to exhaustion. He’s on the run from the Nazis. He needs you to feed and shelter him. You know that if you do, you will be tortured and killed if found out. Not only you, also your children – who are sleeping upstairs – could also be killed to make an example of “collaborators” or transported to a ‘labour’ camp.
We often lament about life in a perfect world. Well in a perfect world there would be no death, no old age, no hunger- or would there? Of course there would. After a while the place would get over crowded if that was the case. But would people have enough money, food? Would there be no homelessness, crime, cruelty etc. ?
a nice happy ending, but alas again you are left wondering is this just something brought on by either Ruth’s faltering memory or Frida’s possible drugging of Ruth to keep her quiet. The whole book is just like Emma Donoghue’s Room. It’s subject matter is something we’d hate to read about in a newspaper, but have to all too often. As a book though it is the basis of an interesting if at times uncomfortable read, but unlike Room, there isn’t really a happy outcome of sorts.
It may be one of most romantic cities in the world, but with what has been visited upon the French capital in the past twelve months, you’d think I’d be turned off going there. On the contrary, this makes me more determined than ever to fan the flames of love in its various arrondissements, walking hand in hand along the banks of the Seine or sittiing outside it’s cafe’s and boulangeries drinking coffee and nibbling fresh flaky croissants while admiring the architecture. Thus bringing us on to this month’s book – it’s The Paris Architect by Charles Belfoure.
A couple of weeks ago my Fiancée and I went to a local Tapas restaurant, we’d been given a voucher by a neighbour for rescuing their cat from being savaged by dogs in the wee small hours of a Saturday morning a couple of weeks previously. The cat subsequently died en route to a 24-hour emergency veterinary hospital. Anyway back to the Tapas restaurant, my Fiancée doesn’t get Tapas, as opposed to ordinary restaurants where you read the menu and order a dish for starters, main course and desert. Whereas in Tapas it’s basically order small dishes from all over the menu as often as you want until you feel full. Me I was brought up by a father who told me to go through life with an open mind and equally broad palate. My Fiancée on the other hand will never get Tapas and that’s fine, because that brings me to this month’s book. It’s The Green Road by Anne Enright.
only it finished because she is or was a local author and I felt I should give her the benefit of the doubt. Hah! It was a waste of time; I could’ve easily thrown it down after the first couple of pages if I didn’t know her. The start is laborious and even though it picks up pace slightly midway, the ending is predictable.
the library door 