Brighton
the surprise hit thriller that the titans of crime writing love
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
'Brighton is the f***ing bomb! I loved it!' Stephen King
'I have enjoyed all of Michael Harvey's books, but his latest, Brighton, is his best. I couldn't stop reading' John Grisham
'This mighty thriller will exhaust you and fool you, astonish you and hold you in its clutches. You may wish you could close your eyes, but they'll be stuck wide open' Washington Review of Books
You came back here to bury your past ... Thing is, you gotta kill it first
Brighton, 1975: a Boston neighbourhood where racial tensions run high and gangs jostle for dominance in the trades that matter – drugrunning, book-keeping and theft. Fifteen-year-old Kevin Pearce knows his best hope is to get the hell out before its bloody streets get a grip on his dreams. But when an act of violence tears their home apart, Kevin is forced to leave for New York, changing the course of his life forever.
Twenty-seven years later Kevin wins the Pulitzer Prize for an investigative article on the wrongful conviction and death of a man from Brighton, and decides to visit his old neighbourhood for the first time in decades. But his past has long shadows – shadows which have taken on a life of their own. And when Kevin's prosecutor girlfriend Lisa asks his advice on a murder case, he is plunged into a web of deception and bloodshed that will test his loyalties to the limit and place the life he has built at risk.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This gritty standalone from Harvey (The Innocence Game) focuses on two childhood friends who have gone in dramatically different directions as adults. Kevin Pearce starts life as an intelligent young man born into poverty and a brutal home life in 1970s Brighton, a hard-bitten section of Boston. Kevin's best friend, Bobby Scales, is a violent urban Huck Finn who's also capable and loyal. After Kevin's grandmother is murdered in a grisly home invasion, Kevin and Bobby ambush and slay the killer. Twenty-seven years later, Kevin, now a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, discovers that the gun Bobby used to shoot his grandmother's killer is the same gun used in the recent murder of an undercover policewoman. Kevin searches for the connection, which reunites him with Bobby, now a tough Brighton bookie. Harvey crisply evokes the dark side of the Boston urban underclass inhabiting a fractured neighborhood in a constant state of casual violence and brutality. An intense, twist-filled climax caps the unremittingly gloomy but moving story.
Customer Reviews
Boston bun fight
Author
American. Chicago-based true crime journalist and film maker, successful novelist, and proprietor of a popular Irish pub. Most of his stories feature his adoptive home, but here he draws upon his experience of growing up in a Boston family of Irish extraction.
Summary
Kevin Pearce is in his early forties, an unmarried investigative journalist for the 'Boston Globe.' He knows the 'Spotlight' dudes but doesn't work with them. More of a loner, our Kev. When young, Pearce was an honour student and rising baseball star in a rough neighbourhood where he also had to cope with the mandatory abusive alcoholic father. Fifteen-year-old Kevin's strong willed grandmother was his rock until her brutal murder. K-dawg skipped town soon after for reasons revealed gradually in the narrative. Our boy is finally back in the old neighbourhood, tidying up loose ends, having just won a Pulitzer for a story about an African-American man on death row after wrongful conviction for murder. (There's a bit of that about.) Kevin locks horns with various blasts from the past, most notably Bobby Scales, his one time mentor and protector: a taxi-driving, illegal bookmaker and extortionist. I believe that's the definition of a successful entrepreneur in certain sections of Boston. Also tangled up in the case are Kevin's two younger sisters, Bridget and Cassie, who have their own problems. Naturally, these soon become his as well. Then there's his exotic mixed-race GF, an ambitious and duplicitous assistant DA. Everyone's drawn together by interlacing webs of lies and deceit culminating in a suitably dramatic denouement. Kevin survives; not many others do apart from GF, ex-GF by then.
Writing
The location is well drawn, the characterisation strong, the conclusion taut and tension-filled.
Bottom line
Reading this gave me a tremendous sense of déjà vu. Surely Dennis Lehane of 'Mystic River' and 'Shutter Island' fame, has already written this story or something very similar. If he has, it doesn't matter.