Book Review

By Derryll White

Lehane, Dennis (2014).  The Drop.

Bob was a lonely Boston bartender. He was bored with life but had no plans. He simply knew that things had to change. And they did.  Bob was a Catholic who did not take Communion.  He knew the bad boys of Boston – had been one himself until he discovered he wasn’t mean enough.

Bob found a dog, abused and discarded in a garbage can. He mended him, called him Rocco after the patron saint of dogs, pharmacists, bachelors and the falsely accused. He let Rocco change his life.

Dennis Lehane is the patron saint of mild hard guys. His novels are peppered with Bobs – guys who rise to deal actively with the curves life throws them.  He has the ability to create characters the reader can totally inhabit.

Read ‘The Drop,’ see the major motion picture, and watch yourself come alive on screen.  It’s an amazing experience.

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Excerpts from the novel:

CRUELTY – “Cruelty is older than the Bible.  Savagery beat its chest in the first human summer and has kept beating it every day since.  The worst in men is commonplace.  The best is a far rarer thing.”

BIGGEST DROP EVER – Super Bowl Sunday.  More money bet than would be bet the rest of the year on the NCAA Final Four, the Kentucky Derby, the NBA Championship Series, the Stanley Cup, and the World Series combined.  If paper money hadn’t been invented yet, they would have created it just to handle the weight and volume of today’s wagers.  Little old ladies who couldn’t tell pigskin from pig’s feet had a feeling about the Seahawks.  Guatemalan illegals who carried the clean-up buckets on construction sites thought Manning was the closest thing to the second coming of our Lord and savior.  Everyone bet, everyone watched.

LIFE (AND DEATH) – “He would have just kept coming,” Bob said.  “Once someone takes something from you and you let them?  They don’t feel gratitude, they just feel like you owe them something more.”  He soaked the mop in the bucket, wrung it out a bit, and slopped it over the main blood spot.  “Makes no sense, right?  But that’s how they feel.  Entitled.  And you can never change their minds after that.”

LOCATION – …work his way as far south as Kampuchea, where he figured no one would look.  He had no exact idea why he figured no one would look there, just that if he were looking for himself, Kampuchea would be about the last place he’d expect to find him.  The last place would be, like, Finland or Manchuria, someplace really cold, and maybe that would have been the best bet, the smartest play, but Marv had lived through so many New England winters he was pretty sure his right nostril and his left nut were permanently damaged by frostbite, so fuck going someplace cold.

– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them.  When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.

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