Lehane’s crime caper can’t escape its televisual roots

fiction: World Gone By. By Dennis Lehane. Little, Brown, €19a. Reviewed by Kevin Power

Dennis Lehane: synthesising the art of upmarket crime-fiction writing with the slick plotting of TV box sets. Picture: Joseph Brown
Dennis Lehane: synthesising the art of upmarket crime-fiction writing with the slick plotting of TV box sets. Picture: Joseph Brown

We seem to be in the middle of a strange cultural feedback loop. It’s become a cliché to remark that the best TV shows of the last 15 years – The Sopranos, Mad Men, The Wire, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Boardwalk Empire, True Detective – are good in part because they’re novelistic. DVD box ...