[ad/gifted - I received an eBook copy for the purpose of this review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.]
Shoot The Moonlight Out by William Boyle
Star rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Publisher: No Exit Press
Publication date: 1st March 2022
Blurb:
Southern Brooklyn, July 1996. Fire hydrants are open and spraying water on the sizzling blacktop. Punk kids have to make their own fun. Bobby Santovasco and his pal Zeke like to throw rocks at cars getting off the Belt Parkway. They think it's dumb and harmless until it's too late to think otherwise. Then there's Jack Cornacchia, a widower who lives with his high school age daughter Amelia and reads meters for Con Ed but also has a secret life as a vigilante, righting neighborhood wrongs through acts of violence. A simple mission to strong-arm a Bay Ridge con man, Max Berry, leads him to cross paths with a tragedy that hits close to home.
Fast forward five years: June 2001. The summer before New York City and the world changed for good. Charlie French is a low-level gangster-wannabe trying to make a name for himself. When he stumbles onto a bowling alley locker stuffed with a bag full of cash, he brings it to his only pal, Max Berry, for safekeeping while he cleans up the mess surrounding it. Bobby Santovasco - with no real future mapped out and the big sin of his past shining brightly in his rearview mirror - has taken a job working as an errand boy for Max Berry. On a recruiting run for Max's Ponzi scheme, Bobby meets Francesca Clarke, born in the neighborhood but an outsider nonetheless. They hit it off. Bobby gets the idea to knock off Max's safe so he and Francesca can escape Brooklyn forever. Little does he know what Charlie French has stashed there.
Meanwhile, Bobby's former stepsister, Lily Murphy, is back home in the neighborhood after college, teaching a writing class in the basement of St. Mary's church. She's also being stalked by her college boyfriend. One of her students is Jack Cornacchia. When she opens up to him about her stalker, Jack decides to take matters into his own hands.
Review:
This is a really wonderful novel. I went into this book excited because I love any type of crime novel but this gave me so much more.
The story is told from many perspectives which in the beginning I felt was a bit much, more than what I'm used to, but it wasn't confusing at all by the end.
The story starts in Brooklyn in 1996, with fourteen year old Bobby Santovasco and his thirteen year old friend Zeke keeping themselves entertained by throwing rocks at cars, until something awful happens.
We then hear about Jack whose wife Janey has passed away and his daughter Amelia's subsequent car accident.
The timeline then switches to 2001 where we go back to some of these characters but we meet some new ones too. But all of their stories are interconnected.
William Boyle writes beautifully and this isn't like any crime novel I've read before. The emotions in every chapter, on every page are felt as you read and the New York backdrop is just perfect in my eyes.
I feel like it is really tough to go into the actual stories that these people are going through without spoiling it but if you like crime dramas that are emotional with flawed characters, this one is for you.
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A massive thank you to No Exit Press for having me on the blog tour. You can find the Twitter handles of the other bloggers who are taking part in the tour in the graphic below.
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