If you were watching Shutter Island on RTÉ One on Wednesday night then you may not know that its author, Dennis Lehane, has just published his new crime thriller, World Gone By. TEN met him in Dublin recently to find out more.
World Gone By tells the story of Joe Coughlin, a Boston-born former gangster who has built an empire in 1940s Tampa but who begins to suspect that his days are numbered.
Gone Baby Gone author Lehane told TEN: "There are several themes. There's definitely a father and son theme. There's definitely this idea that even the worst people love things. And so, you see a lot of damage going on in the book, in which you say, 'Oh but he was a nice guy' or 'He just had a child' or 'She just did this'. But in this world that doesn't matter.
"There's a moment in the book where somebody says to Joe, 'You think that because you feel bad about doing bad things that makes you a good person. But it does not'. And that is one of the big themes of the book.
"The other would be, I think – and it's stated in the book – is that in the moment that you think you're losing power you've probably already lost it."
Find out more about World Gone By by clicking the link above.
World Gone By is published by Little, Brown.
