We’re ecstatic to tell you that LIVE BY NIGHT will hit next week’s New York Times bestseller list at #8! It will also be #13 on the combined print and ebook list.
One critic proclaims, “This is a book that should put his name where it belongs, right up there alongside Doctorow and Dreiser.” See what other nice things the critics have to say after the jump!
The Washington Post praises this “this meticulously crafted portrait of our violent national past.” They state:
Reduced to a bare-bones summary, Live by Night might sound like the sort of standard crime saga we’ve all encountered far too many times. In Lehane’s hands, however, it becomes something larger and infinitely more complex. With its fresh, precise language, its acute sympathy for the passions that shape — and sometimes warp — its central characters and its lovingly detailed recreation of an earlier age, Live by Night transcends the familiar and assumes an unimpeachable reality of its own.
The South Florida Sun Sentinel calls the book “a masterful outing by an author known for superior storytelling.” They compare the book to such iconic crime films and novels as Goodfellas, Once Upon a Time in America, The Sopranos and The Godfather saga. “Like those other works,” they say, “Live by Night goes beyond the life of crime, skirting that fine line between glorifying the illegal and showing the humanity behind even mobsters. In this 10th novel, Dennis Lehane examines our history, morality in an amoral world and what motivates some people to ‘live by night,’ making up their own rules as one character says.”
“No one writes crime fiction like Dennis Lehane,” declares the Denver Post. “Great ones are practicing the craft with their own take, but when it comes to capturing a working-class surround that yields both heroes and villains — both of whom may be on the wrong side of the law — Lehane is without match. His stories are built around his characters’ lives and resulting decisions. Live By Night is no less than all that, thought-provoking, page-turning and emotionally satisfying.” The review concludes, “Lehane presents a 1920s world view that resonates. He delivers in prose both digestible and memorable. At times, he is truly Chandleresque, in all its cynical glory.”
Lastly, The Scotsman says, “This is a book that should put his name where it belongs, right up there alongside Doctorow and Dreiser.”
