The Given Day By Dennis Lehane

This book is about the turmoil and paranoia of the post-WWI era in America.

I really like this book, but I liked it less than Lehane's other books (which is not to say that it was bad). The main reason for my three star rating is that the characters were a bit shallow at times. I also thought that Lehane would have gone into more detail about some of the historical events, because otherwise they seemed very real and believable to me. Despite these issues, I still enjoyed reading it immensely. The Given Day was well written and entertaining. It has a good balance between action and dialogue, which makes it a page turner because you want to see what happens next, while giving you enough background information so you don't feel that you've missed out on anything. It also made me have mixed feelings about the characters, even though I did feel very sympathetic towards them. Overall, I would recommend this book to people who enjoy reading suspenseful fiction set in historical times (1920s). Lehane is an excellent author and he paints a vivid picture of the political landscape in America at that time.

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The Final Detail By Dennis Lehane

This book is about hard-boiled Boston detective, working under request for his old police chief friend, trying to track down his daughter's murderer . Lehane has created very memorable characters here; their personalities are complex and well developed. The dialogue was gritty and really captured the way that men like these would actually speak to each other. The detective was especially well crafted; I felt like I really got to know his motivations and reasoning, even though he is an extremely sombre character. That's all the more reason why I liked reading about him so much! There are also quite a lot of subplots that come together towards the end of the novel. It kept me interested to see where it would go next, because there were so many different possible outcomes to consider along the way.

The Given Day takes place during post-WWI America, after prohibition began (1920) and before Freud published "The Interpretation Of Dreams" (1923). [...] This book has received generally good reviews from both readers and critics alike. It has been particularly praised for its complex and interesting characters, its vivid imagery and for the well-researched historical detail.

4.3
4 ratings