The Drop

July 28, 2014
This gritty gem from Lehane (Mystic River) has a curious origin. The short story “Animal Rescue,” which appeared in 2009’s Boston Noir, was the basis for the screenplay of the soon-to-be-released film The Drop, to which this is the tie-in. Boston bartender Bob Saginowski pulls a beaten pup from a winter trash can, a small good deed with large consequences. The rescue leads Bob to Nadia Dunn, who helps him take care of the dog, and also to crazy Eric Deeds, who claims the dog is his. While Bob tries to fend off Deeds, his cousin Marv, onetime owner of Cousin Marv’s bar, contends with money issues and pride and the Chechens, who now own his bar and use it as a money drop. A parade of weary, quirky characters—thieves, thugs, and hard guys—will resonate with Lehane fans. Amid his struggles, Bob establishes a tenuous relationship with Nadia, and finally takes a stand in this stark and moving short novel. Agent: Ann Rittenberg, Ann Rittenberg Literary.

September 15, 2014
The bard of blue-collar Boston crime returns with a sleight-of-hand novel tinged with sin and redemption. The latest from Lehane (Live by Night, 2012, etc.) is a novel with an unusual genesis, and it's shorter and less intricate than usual. It began when he was asked to adapt one of his short stories ("Animal Rescue") for a movie. Though his novels have seen success on the big screen, this was his screenwriting debut, and it preceded the writing of this book, which might be dismissed, in lesser hands, as a "novelization" of the film. It's richer than a mere re-creation of a movie on the page because the author gets inside the heads and thoughts of his characters in a way that a movie generally can't. And this particular perspective is crucial when it comes to protagonist Bob, a keep-to-himself bartender who works for Cousin Marv. Both men, like pretty much every man in their neighborhood, have some sort of shady past, but the two have apparently gone comparatively straight. Yet Cousin Marv's bar remains used by the Chechen mobsters who own it as a money drop for transferring funds. Such is the backdrop for what appears to be the main plot, in which lonesome, loveless Bob finds a beaten puppy in a trash can and is persuaded by a woman who witnesses the incident (and who has her own questionable past) to take it home. Since "all he wanted was to not be alone," the connection with both the dog and the woman proves so transforming that he "suspected they might have been brought together by something other than chance." But there's another connection, a crazy thug and rumored killer who claims that both the dog and the woman are his. As the novel progresses, every character has secrets and revelations-except maybe Rocco, the dog-as the plot pivots in some surprising directions. Even one of the novelist's lesser efforts has the signature style, edge and heart to delight fans.

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Starred review from September 1, 2014
Yes, this short novel is technically a novelizationit's adapted from Lehane's screenplay for a movie of the same name, which itself was adapted from Lehane's short story Animal Rescuebut don't let the book's mixed parentage get in the way. This is a tight, gritty little tale of working-class crime in Boston, reminiscent not only of Lehane's earlier crime fiction, but also of the work of the great George V. Higgins. Bob Saginowski is a lonely bartender working at a tired watering hole called Cousin Marv'sworking for Cousin Marv himself, in fact, who is Bob's actual cousin. The sleepy joint, home to a motley crew of beer-soaked regulars, serves as a drop bar through which Chechen gangsters continually move thousands of ill-gotten dollars. Until one night when a couple of hapless stickup men, who seemingly wandered in from an Elmore Leonard novel, steal the loot, leaving Cousin Marv and, by extension, bartender Bob in a pickle with the Chechens. Meanwhile, Bob rescues an abandoned dog, meets a girl who knows dogs, tangles with another lowlife claiming to be the dog's owner, and finds himself feeling oddly determined to overcome 20 years of lethargy. Like both Higgins and Leonard, Lehane breathes pulsing life into his story through the small details of his stoop-shouldered characters' lives, investing their every mannerism with unspoken emotion and the weight of too many bad decisions, all of which makes Bob's transformation from quiet desperation to quiet determination a powerful kind of existential drama. And there's a dog, too! HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Expect the movie version to draw readers to this streetwise story, which marks Lehane's return from broad-canvas historical fiction to the close quarters of Boston's mean streets.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)