Author Dennis Lehane

Dennis Lehane is a force to be reckoned with. His best selling novels include Gone, Baby Gone, Mystic River, Shutter Island, The Given Day, and Moonlight Mile, and big-screen adaptations have been helmed by Ben Affleck, Clint Eastwood, and Martin Scorsese.

By 1926, banning of alcohol in the United States had given birth to a maze of underground distilleries and speakeasies with gangsters and police corruption running rampant. Joe Coughlin, the youngest son of one of Boston's most prominent cops, has strayed from his father's example and lives a life of petty criminality for one of the city's toughest bosses. But when Emma Gould crosses Joe's path, he knows he's done for.

Emma is the mistress of Albert White, the gangster singlehandedly responsible for rubbing out Joe's old boss and landing Joe in prison. Once in prison, Joe falls under Italian mob protection, and on release, heads down to Florida to push Albert White out of his bootlegging territory with the backing of his Italian "friends." What follows is a shady tale of swindling and bamboozling in Florida, Cuba, and Boston that pits one mobster against another in a fight for respect, superiority, and firm control of the country's illicit rum business.