Shoot the Moonlight Out
by William Boyle
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Pub Date 24 Mar 2022 | Archive Date 22 Mar 2022
Oldcastle Books | No Exit Press
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Description
An explosive crime drama, Shoot the Moonlight Out evokes a mystical Brooklyn where the sidewalks are cracked, where Virgin Mary statues tilt in fenced front yards, and where smudges of moonlight reflect in puddles even on the blackest nights.
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. A sense of loss is palpable - what has been lost and what will be lost - and Boyle's characters face down old ghosts with grim determination, as ripples of consequence radiate in dangerous directions.
Advance Praise
PRAISE FOR WILLIAM BOYLE
'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
'An Elmore Leonard-style caper... funny, touching and exhilarating in all the right places' - Guardian
'Acidulously funny' - Telegraph
'A blood-splattered crime caper with a wonderful cast of characters' - Mail on Sunday
'Boyle has quietly proven he can take on any number of kinds of crime fiction, from a screwball farce to a hardboiled noir to a heartfelt examination of lonely people whose lives cross' - CrimeReads
'Boyle gives us an intimate portrait of a neighborhood in vivid, evocative prose, and explores how place and the past make us who we are' - Melissa Ginsburg, author of Sunset City
'A Jacobean revenge tangle in a Brooklyn where all the players have survived the same nuns. Even the most desperately lost of William Boyle's characters retain a hungry heart' - John Sayles, author of Yellow Earth
Available Editions
| EDITION | Paperback |
| ISBN | 9780857304933 |
| PRICE | £9.99 (GBP) |
Featured Reviews
Alina B, Reviewer
A riveting portrait of lives crashing together at the turn of the century
I have to admit that this is my first William Boyle read but definitely not the last. I got so attached to this story and the main characters, three emotionally damaged people brought together to heal. This is one true murder mystery that has so much more in it. It is funny but it is also tragic and strange
Dave B, Reviewer
Shoot the Moonlight Out is the first book I've read by William Boyle but it certainly won't be the last,within minutes of finishing it I had all of his previous books added to my Amazon "Wishlist", the day after I'd bought 2 of them.
In Southern Brooklyn in 1996, working class widower Jack Cornacchia ,a meter reader who does a bit of vigilante work on the side,is bringing up his school-aged daughter Amelia. They have a great relationship, Jack is a decent guy and Amelia is a contented girl with ambitions to become an author. Driving home one day from warning off a fraudster who has been preying on a vulnerable woman Jack comes across the scene of a tragedy caused by the stupid actions of a pair of teenage punks that leaves him devastated.
5 years later gangster wannabe Charlie French steals something that doesn't belong to him that sets off a series of events that impact on those involved in the events of that tragic day 5 years previously.
William Boyle's writing style is very similar to that of Don Winslow,another favourite author of mine. The book is full of memorable well-drawn characters,most of them flawed,some of them deeply flawed, and often with links that they're initially unaware of. Jack in particular is a great character,a man life has kicked in the teeth trying to find himself after almost giving up ,a decent guy it's not wise to cross.
I thought at first that this was going to be a straightforward tale of revenge,it's far more than that. It is a crime thriller but it's also a tale of redemption, love and unusual relationships, it's also very funny in places.
One of my favourite books of 2022 so far and the day after finishing it I've bought 2 more books by this author..
Kath B, Reviewer
We start in the past, in the late 90s, with dumb kids doing stupid things. I think we've all done stupid things in our pasts, and mostly got away with them - there but for the grace... Sadly, Bobby doesn't and tragedy turns to death. Something that haunts him. We also have Jack who is a bit of a vigilante, meting out justice where the law fails. One of the recipients for that is con-man Max.
Back in the present, in 2001, we follow Charlie who stumbles over a bag of money which he takes to Max to look after. Bobby is now working for Max...
And so begins a convoluted tale of interconnected stories, all centred around each other, the likes of which I have to leave to the author to enlighten you of as I fear that saying anything else would probably inject spoilers into the mix and that really wouldn't be good.
Suffice to say I was impressed with the skill of the author to have so many juggling balls in the air at any one time and all in perfect motion as they rose and fell accordingly. As the characters all did within their own timelines, intersecting with others as and when...
It's very character driven and, as such, you need the characters to be strong enough to hold their own. Which I am pleased to say they do, with aplomb. Only issue I had was that I was never allowed to fully immerse myself into a single character and their part in the whole before the focus switched and I was shocked into another's story. But I guess that was the point of the book, whether I liked it or not! What was constant however, and I can almost consider it as a character in its own right, so important it was, was Brooklyn itself.
This is a new-to-me author and, after reading this book, I am definitely going to check out his back catalogue. My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.
Greville W, Reviewer
A new author to me but not for much longer as this was truly excellent. A wide ranging thriller that was based in Brooklyn and filled with beautifully depicted characters who all took centre stage at times.
The action was breathless, gritty and sometimes violent and the sense of time and place beautifully depicted.
I devoured this and will be searching for his back catalogue. Highly recommended.
Librarian 431790
A noir that kept me reading as I was fascinated by the characters and the plot.
It's a story that starts slow but always keeps you turning pages as you want to know what will happen to the characters.
Excellent plot and character development, good storytelling.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine
Nicole C, Reviewer
Max runs a Ponzi scheme out of his dump of an office while drinking carton after carton of milk. Lily returns to Brooklyn after college and teaches a creative writing course out of the church basement. Charlie is a low-level mobster with a backpack full of money and drugs. Jack lost his daughter, wife, and parents and is now a neighborhood do-good vigilante. Francesca dreams of getting out of town of making movies in Los Angeles. Bobby is Max's assistant, tortured by a fatal mistake he made years ago as a teenager. These stories and characters converge and connect, crash and burn.
Boyne's novels are gritty and uncompromising. He shines a light on the middle to low-income Italian American community living in Brooklyn. There's lots of violence and death, but there's also lots of love and hope. He's fast becoming one of my favorite authors.
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