Shoot the Moonlight Out

William Boyle

$22.99

Paperback

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English

No Exit Press
01 June 2022

Fiction & Literature; Crime & Mystery; Thriller & suspense

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.

A riveting portrait of lives crashing together at the turn of the century, Shoot the Moonlight Out is tragic and tender and funny and strange.

By: William Boyle
Imprint: No Exit Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 198mm, Width: 129mm,
ISBN: 9780857304933
ISBN 10: 0857304933
Pages: 320
Publication Date: 01 June 2022
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

William Boyle is from Brooklyn, New York. His debut novel, Gravesend, was published as #1,000 in the Rivages/Noir collection in France, shortlisted for the Prix Polar SNCF, nominated for the Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere and shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger. Boyle is also the author of the Hammett Prize-nominated The Lonely Witness (No Exit Press), a book of short stories, Death Don't Have No Mercy and another novel, Tout est Brise, released in France by Gallmeister. A Friend is a Gift You Give Yourself was published to enormous praise, it was an Amazon Best Book in 2019. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi.

Reviews for Shoot the Moonlight Out

Boyle's latest novel is a kaleidoscopic vision of life in South Brooklyn, shifting between timelines and perspectives to bring together a swirling, fate-laced story of modern New York... one of his best stories to date * CrimeReads (Most Anticipated Books, Winter 2021) * Masterly literary noir. This mature, nuanced work is a must for George Pelecanos fans * Publishers Weekly (starred review) * Boyle emerges not just as a consummate crime writer but as a poet of the underclass, unwaveringly portraying lives gone wrong but still finding a little moonlight spilling its light on the cracks in the sidewalks and all the cracked hearts * Booklist (starred review) * William Boyle's stark and turbulent crime thriller boasts an endlessly fascinating and empathetic cast of characters. Hailing from Brooklyn himself, Boyle imbues the setting with an air of authenticity and realism as his characters leap from the page... Shoot the Moonlight Out subtly builds towards a collision of lives intertwined and fates inextricably linked * Bookpage (starred review) * William Boyle's Shoot the Moonlight Out is his best yet, an operatic ode to passion and grief, reckless youth and radical forgiveness, and most of all the pangs and beauty of parental love, unswerving and irreplaceable. Sprawling yet intimate, epic yet full of the lived-in humor of the great Sidney Lumet or Richard Price, it hums hard in your heart long after the final page -- Megan Abbott, author of The Turnout and Dare Me