The Given Day

You can imagine that genre writers with literary aspirations must yearn to roam outside of their pop-pulp pigeonhole; they want the freedom to pen that epic novel, the one that truly captures a point in time within a broad canvas. Dennis Lehane’s sprawling, monumental new book is grander than his usually modest regional mysteries, and using a key historical event—the 1919 Boston Police Strike—to present a 360-degree view of early 20th-century America, the author is tiptoeing into Dos Passos territory. Yet despite the period trappings, this is still a Lehane story, complete with the patois-driven punch, street grit and the sort of back-alley Beantown violence that his fans expect. Only the scope—and his ambitions—have changed.

It isn’t surprising to see the Mystic River author aiming for the high-lit fence. Still, Lehane’s tale of Danny Coughlin, a cop who ends up unionizing the force, and Luther Lawrence, an African-American with a secret past, is a huge leap forward in terms of scale. Babe Ruth, Calvin Coolidge and J. Edgar Hoover mingle with the flatfoots, Bolsheviks and plug-uglies; his insights into xenophobia (immigrants are often branded “terrorists”) and political corruption embedded in our nation’s past couldn’t be more pertinent. His cup occasionally runneth over as he portrays his city in all its multilayered glory, and several exchanges between Coughlin and his Irish-maid girlfriend might have been lifted from a young-adult novel. But Lehane’s descriptive powers, especially when he’s detailing the riots, are beyond reproach, and even the peripheral strands are never less than compelling. The author has added substance to the sharklike momentum of his prose, and the result is something close to a juggernaut.

Buy The Given Day now on BN.com