52 Books in 52 Weeks: Dennis Lehane's The Drop

Robin McCormack's book challenge continues. (Reports are due every Sunday.)

This week, I read Dennis Lehane's new novel, The Drop (William Morrow, September 2, 2014, 224 pp.)

Like many of Lehane's novels, including Mystic River, The Drop is set in working class Boston and is a crime novel which delves deeply into the psychology of its characters. Unlike his other novels, The Drop started as the first chapter of what Lehane calls a "failed novel," which he used as as the basis for his short story, "Animal Rescue"  published in the anthology Boston Noir.  After writing for HBO's The Wire, Lehane was asked to expand the short story into a film, The Drop--James Gandolfini's last release also coming out this month--and then asked if it might also be a novel.

The story is of  Bob, who tends bar for the Chechen mob and whose lonely life changes after he adopts an abused pitbull puppy, which he names Rocco after the patron saint for "bachelors, pilgrims and dogs."

Recommended.

Dennis Lehane: The Given Day

Cover of Dennis Lehane's new novel, The Given Day, out from William Morrow, a Harper Collins imprint. More info is available at his website.


Dennis Lehane seamlessly weaves a wealth of historical research into a compelling read. Writing again about Boston, this time out he forgoes the mystery/thriller genre to write an epic novel about race and class, combining the stories of Luther Laurence, an African American, and Danny Coughlin, son of a Boston police captain during the influenza epidemic and the Boston police strike of 1919, just as Babe Ruth (who makes several cameos) is about to be sold from the Bost Red Sox to the New York Yankees.