Lehane is such a master plotter, you needn't have read the previous novels to know exactly who Joe is and where he came from…[Lehane's] mordant wit entrances readers who want more from a crime novel than endless scenes of stomach-turning violence. Which, by the way, Lehane also delivers, in a tightly coiled narrative…Plot, wit, violence, colorful characterswhat more do you want…
The New York Times Book Review - Marilyn Stasio
World Gone By is…suspenseful, devious, well-constructed and as filled with ethical questions as it is with gangsters. You've been through a lot by the time you finish it, including a few figurative choruses of "Danny Boy."
The New York Times - Janet Maslin
03/09/2015 Edgar-winner Lehane wraps up the Joe Coughlin saga that began with The Given Day (2008) and Live by Night (2012) in fine fashion. By 1942, Irish-American gangster Joe Coughlin is almost untouchable. In his own mind, he's an irreplaceable asset not only to Dion Bartolo, the head of the Bartolo crime family, but to Mafia bosses such as Meyer Lansky, Lucky Luciano, and Frank Costello. So Joe is shocked when convicted killer Theresa Del Frisco tells him that there's a contract out for him. Life in the mob is cutthroat and treacherous, and while Joe worries about a possible hit, other matters intrude as fights over territory turn bloody and fears of a snitch create suspicions. Coughlin is a marvelous creation, loyal to his friends and fiercely protective of his nine-year-old son, Tomas. The code he operates under allows him to navigate a path between brutality and charity, a shark among sharks. Lehane's many fans will relish this stunning conclusion to Joe Coughlin's journey. Agent: Ann Rittenberg, Ann Rittenberg Literary. (Mar.)
Lehane, who has developed into a novelist of seemingly effortless power and command, is missing nothing in his delivery. Few writers can equal his ability to balance dark and light, casual and intense, here and then. More than a sequel, World Gone By seems lit by its predecessor and the events of the past as if through a prism—or maybe a black light. In the process, Joe Coughlin’s story becomes more epic still.” — Chicago Tribune
“Lehane writes convincingly, tensely, tersely, powerfully, about the fatal tensions of daily Mob life without romanticizing it, without judging it. He steers the plot and its characters toward inevitable consequences. Everyone here is bloodied—splattered with either their own or someone else’s blood...This gangster novel is violent, graphic and guiltily compelling.” — USA Today
“Lehane has Elmore Leonard’s ear for dialogue and a masterly touch with description... World Gone By offers a frisson like you get from the best gangster sagas from The Godfather to The Sopranos — entry into a world of complex characters who are operating within their highly risky world. And it serves a plot that drives relentlessly forward without ever feeling forced.” — Miami Herald
“Lehane is shaping a tragedy in World Gone By , along classic lines set in a seamy underbelly. The novel’s plot is as complex as its morality while both are fueled by searing betrayals.” — New York Daily News
“Lehane’s prose is muscular and lean, elegant and brutal, and his action scenes are cause to sit back and exhale when they’re over...World Gone By is a poetic conclusion to an accomplished American crime story.” — Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“A textbook guide on how to end a series .” — Associated Press
“Lehane [is] a novelist of…effortless power.” — Chicago Tribune
“Lehane’s 12th novel is a classic gangster epic.” — Tampa Bay Times
A textbook guide on how to end a series .
Lehane is shaping a tragedy in World Gone By , along classic lines set in a seamy underbelly. The novel’s plot is as complex as its morality while both are fueled by searing betrayals.
Lehane has Elmore Leonard’s ear for dialogue and a masterly touch with description... World Gone By offers a frisson like you get from the best gangster sagas from The Godfather to The Sopranos — entry into a world of complex characters who are operating within their highly risky world. And it serves a plot that drives relentlessly forward without ever feeling forced.
Lehane writes convincingly, tensely, tersely, powerfully, about the fatal tensions of daily Mob life without romanticizing it, without judging it. He steers the plot and its characters toward inevitable consequences. Everyone here is bloodied—splattered with either their own or someone else’s blood...This gangster novel is violent, graphic and guiltily compelling.”
Lehane, who has developed into a novelist of seemingly effortless power and command, is missing nothing in his delivery. Few writers can equal his ability to balance dark and light, casual and intense, here and then. More than a sequel, World Gone By seems lit by its predecessor and the events of the past as if through a prism—or maybe a black light. In the process, Joe Coughlin’s story becomes more epic still.”
Lehane’s 12th novel is a classic gangster epic.
Lehane’s prose is muscular and lean, elegant and brutal, and his action scenes are cause to sit back and exhale when they’re over...World Gone By is a poetic conclusion to an accomplished American crime story.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Lehane, who has developed into a novelist of seemingly effortless power and command, is missing nothing in his delivery. Few writers can equal his ability to balance dark and light, casual and intense, here and then. More than a sequel, World Gone By seems lit by its predecessor and the events of the past as if through a prism—or maybe a black light. In the process, Joe Coughlin’s story becomes more epic still.”
Lehane writes convincingly, tensely, tersely, powerfully, about the fatal tensions of daily Mob life without romanticizing it, without judging it. He steers the plot and its characters toward inevitable consequences. Everyone here is bloodied—splattered with either their own or someone else’s blood...This gangster novel is violent, graphic and guiltily compelling.”
Lehane has Elmore Leonard’s ear for dialogue and a masterly touch with description... World Gone By offers a frisson like you get from the best gangster sagas from The Godfather to The Sopranos — entry into a world of complex characters who are operating within their highly risky world. And it serves a plot that drives relentlessly forward without ever feeling forced.
The novel’s plot is as complex as its morality.
03/15/2015 The closer of Lehane's trilogy featuring his Boston-bred protagonist Joe Coughlin (after 2008's The Given Day and 2012's Live by Night) follows a more mystical path than its predecessors. The book has more literary aspirations as well: it's classified as literary fiction, not crime or historical fiction. After a bloody rise through the ranks of the Florida Mafia and the murder of his wife, Graciela, Joe is now the Bartolo family's consigliere. Local and regional bosses look to him for guidance and adjudication; some pine for the days when he ran things and everybody got rich. But when he hears of a plot to kill him and starts seeing ghosts, Joe ponders his violent past and worries about leaving his son Tomas an orphan. VERDICT Expect high demand for this title, no matter the BISAC classification. Fans of Lehane and of his historical series will line up to read the finale, as will those who enjoy Mafia and organized crime stories. A movie version of Live by Night (directed by and starring Ben Affleck) is in the works, which should provoke even more interest in the series. [See Prepub Alert, 7/7/14.]—Liz French, Library Journal
A terrific performance by Jim Frangione makes Lehane’s novel featuring Joe Coughlin (THE GIVEN DAY, 2008; LIVE BY NIGHT, 2012) much more than a simple crime thriller. Characters are a nasty, murderous lot, but Frangione turns them, if not sympathetic, into something more than two-dimensional thugs with an appetite for blood. Coughlin, now a widower and fiercely devoted to his son, learns that someone’s put a hit out on him. Using his connections to Cuba and Tampa’s 1942 gangster hierarchy, he tries to find out who’s behind the contract. Frangione’s delivery of Lehane’s no-nonsense dialogue is as sharp and piercing as machine-gun fire. “Gangster ethics” may seem like an oxymoron, but Frangione turns Coughlin’s uncertainties into a moving exploration of a flawed man’s life. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine
★ 2014-12-17 A multilayered, morally ambiguous novel of family, blood and betrayal.Working against a backdrop of World War II, Lehane continues and perhaps concludes the ambitious series of historical novels that began with the epic sweep of The Given Day (2008) and continued with Live By Night (2012). Almost a decade after the climactic carnage of that second novel, protagonist Joe Coughlin has apparently left the violence of his gangster past behind, mixing easily in the upper echelons of Tampa society, serving behind the scenes as "the fixer for the entire Florida criminal syndicate." Still a widower and now a devoted father to his young son, he appears to be above the fray, a respected figure without enemies. Yet he's haunted by the ghost of a young man he can't quite identify, and he's threatened by a rumor that someone has threatened a hit on him for reasons unknown. He experiences tension between some of the mob leaders to whom he feels loyal, amid rampant speculation of a rat in the ranks who's skimming and perhaps snitching. He's also having an affair, one that seems doomed. On the surface, this is a crime novel that adheres to convention, but Coughlin has a depth beyond genre fiction, with a sense of morality and a code of ethics that the life he has chosen frequently puts to the test. As a particularly evil adversary warns him, "You have put a lot of sin out into the world, Joseph. Maybe it's rolling back in on the tide. Maybe men like us, in order to be men like us, sacrifice peace of mind forever." While this seems to lack some of the literary ambition of Lehane's best work, its cumulative thematic power and whip-crack narrative propulsion will enrich the reader's appreciation past the last page. On one level, a very moving meditation on fathers and sons; on another, an illumination of character and fate.