--- description: Dennis Lehane's hero is a melancholy mobster title: Review: The Sad Guys of 'World Gone By' image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) ## Entertainment Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close * [Books](/tag/books/) ## Books Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # Review: The Sad Guys of _World Gone By_ by [Lev Grossman](/author/lev-grossman/) ## Lev Grossman Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Mar 19, 2015 10:36 AM CUT by [Lev Grossman](/author/lev-grossman/) ## Lev Grossman Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Mar 19, 2015 10:36 AM CUT A modern master of crime writing, Dennis Lehane is also something of a professional Bostonian, permanently associated with the broad Massachusetts accents in the movie Mystic River, which was based on one of his 12 novels. The story in his new one, _World Gone By_, started in Boston two books ago: it’s the last in a loose-limbed trilogy that began with _The Given Day_, set in Boston in 1918\. But _Live by Night_ followed its hero, Joe Coughlin, son of a Boston cop, to Cuba and Florida, where he thrived as a gangster, albeit by dint of some toe-curling moral compromises. In _World Gone By_, Joe is still there, and at 37–pretty old in gangster years–he’s feeling his oats. Joe’s raising his son as a single dad–gangster wives don’t live long either–and is largely retired. These days he commits his crimes mostly in an advisory capacity; his professional heyday is one of several worlds that are gone or going by. “Time is rented,” Joe thinks, with characteristically hard-boiled wisdom, “never owned.” So he’s baffled when he learns that there’s a contract out on him. Who would want an aging, relatively harmless golden boy like him dead? While Joe scrambles to figure it out, a turf war kicks up between Italian mobsters and a local black syndicate. Meanwhile the other turf war, involving Hitler and Europe, is going on in the background. _World Gone By_ is plotted like a thriller, but even with bullets flying, Joe maintains an elegiac, sunset mood. At times it’s a little comic, watching this multiple murderer, who’d “killed, stolen, maimed and assaulted his way through his 37 years,” swap mournful aphorisms with his associates. (“Is everyone we know broken?” “Pretty much.”) But maybe even hard-boiled guys go a little soft in the end. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3750519/dennis-lehane-world-gone-by/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3750519/dennis-lehane-world-gone-by/"},"headline":"Review: The Sad Guys of World Gone By","datePublished":"2015-03-19T10:36:15.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T05:16:31.083Z","description":"Dennis Lehane's hero is a melancholy mobster","url":"https://time.com/3750519/dennis-lehane-world-gone-by/","keywords":["Books"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Lev Grossman","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/lev-grossman/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/books/","name":"Books"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3750519/dennis-lehane-world-gone-by/","name":"Review: The Sad Guys of World Gone By"}}]}] ```