WORLD GONE BY by Dennis Lehane

Joe Coughlin is a conflicted gangster in the 1940s.  He’s killed a lot of people, broken a lot of laws, and spent time in prison, but, despite all that, he has a moral compass of sorts.  He also has a nine-year-old son, Tomas, whom he will protect at any cost.  The boy’s mother is dead, and keeping Tomas out of harm’s way is a challenge for a father whose “thing” is mob-like, especially when Joe learns that someone has ordered a hit on him.  No one in Joe’s circle of baddies can imagine why anyone would do this, much less who would want him dead.  This novel is very violent, but it has a soul in its own way, but I was disappointed in the ending.  Also, Joe has taken to seeing a ghost of his childhood self, and I did not understand that at all.  Is the ghost supposed to represent his innocence before he got caught up in the underworld?  Certainly Joe does not reminisce about his childhood, which was far less happy than his precarious and exciting adulthood.  I get that Joe is honorable in his own way and remorseful about some of the things he’s done in the past for the sake of his corrupt empire.  He makes some difficult decisions that have devastating ramifications, and his rationalizations make a distorted kind of sense.  He has to weigh his loyalties to longtime friends and associates against what is most important to him—Tomas.  The plot held my attention, but this novel is just too dark and depressing for me.  I like Lehane’s PI duo, Patrick and Angela, much better.