Dennis Lehane

the novel opens in 1918 and encompasses the 1919 Boston Police Strike and its aftermath.

According to Lehane, "The strike changed everything. It had a big effect on the unionization movement, and Prohibition came on the heels of that, then Calvin Coolidge promising to break the unions. That's all linked to what's going on now.".

While Lehane's epic novel centers on the 1919 Boston police strike, it contains a national sweep and may be the first of a trilogy or perhaps a four-book series.

Lehane called the novel his "great white whale" and said that when he finally finished it, he would "either write a sequel—or take a break from the cops and return to Patrick and Angie."

Dennis Lehane (born August 4, 1965) is an American author.

He has published more than a dozen novels; the first several were a series of mysteries featuring recurring characters, including A Drink Before the War.

His brother, Gerry Lehane, who is two and a half years older than Dennis, trained at the Trinity Repertory Company in Providence and became an actor in New York in 1990.

Gerry is a member of the Invisible City Theatre Company.

Lehane is married to Chisa Lehane.

He has two children from a previous marriage.

He is a graduate of Boston College High School (a Jesuit prep school), Eckerd College (where he found his passion for writing), and the graduate program in creative writing at Florida International University in Miami, Florida.

He occasionally made guest appearances as himself in the ABC comedy/drama TV series Castle.

Lehane's first novel, A Drink Before the War (1994), which introduced the recurring characters Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro, won the 1995 Shamus Award for Best First P.I. Novel.

Four of his novels have been adapted into films of the same names: Clint Eastwood's Mystic River (2003), Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island (2010), and Gone Baby Gone (2007) and Live by Night (2016), both directed by Ben Affleck.

His short story "Animal Rescue" was also adapted into the film The Drop, noted for being the final film role for actor James Gandolfini.

Lehane was born and raised in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts.

He lived in the Boston area most of his life, where he sets most of his books, but now lives in southern California.

He spent summers on Fieldston Beach in Marshfield.

Lehane is the youngest of five children.

His father was a foreman for Sears & Roebuck, and his mother worked in a Boston public school cafeteria.

Both of his parents emigrated from Ireland.

Lehane is a graduate of Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Lehane's novel Mystic River was adapted into a film in 2003; also called Mystic River and directed by Clint Eastwood, it starred Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, and Kevin Bacon.

Lehane can be briefly seen waving from a car in the parade scene at the end of the film.

The novel itself was a finalist for the PEN/Winship Award and won the Anthony Award and the Barry Award for Best Novel, the Massachusetts Book Award in Fiction, and France's Prix Mystère de la critique.

Lehane's first play, Coronado, debuted in New York in December 2005, produced by Invisible City Theater Company.

Coronado is based on his acclaimed short story Until Gwen, which was originally published in The Atlantic Monthly and was selected for both The Best American Short Stories and The Best Mystery Short Stories of 2005.

Lehane described working on his historical novel, The Given Day, as "a five- or six-year project."

The play had its regional premiere at American Stage in St. Petersburg in April 2006 and its Midwest premiere in the fall of 2007 with Steep Theatre Company in Chicago.

The fourth novel in the series, Gone, Baby, Gone, was adapted into a film of the same title in 2007; it was directed by Ben Affleck and starred Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan as Kenzie and Gennaro.

Commenting on the movie after a sneak peek, Lehane said, "I saw the movie and it's terrific, I wasn't gonna say anything if I didn't like it but it's really terrific."

Reportedly, Lehane "has never wanted to write the screenplays for the films [based on his own books], because he says he has 'no desire to operate on my own child.'"

On October 22, 2007, Paramount Pictures announced that it had optioned Shutter Island with Martin Scorsese attached as director.

The Laeta Kalogridis-scripted adaptation has Leonardo DiCaprio playing U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels, "who is investigating the disappearance of a murderess who escaped from a hospital for the criminally insane and is presumed to be hiding on the remote Shutter Island."

Mark Ruffalo plays U.S. Marshal Chuck Aule.

The novel was published in October 2008.

Production started in March 2008; Shutter Island was released on February 19, 2010.

In 2010 Lehane published Moonlight Mile, his sixth book in the Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro series, and his first of that genre in 11 years.

Lehane was appointed to the board of trustees of the Boston Public Library by Mayor Thomas Menino in December 2011.

He published World Gone By in March 2015.