Chapters 1 and 2 Summary

Live by Night, a crime novel by Dennis Lehane, tells the story of a gangster named Joe Coughlin, who rises from a stick-up man in Boston to become a rich and powerful mob boss, largely through establishing an illicit rum-running industry in Florida during Prohibition. Part I is titled "Boston, 1926-1929." Chapter One, "A Twelve O'Clock Fella in a Nine O'Clock Town," begins with a foreshadowing that says some years from now, Joe will find himself on a boat surrounded by gunmen with his feet encased in cement, and all because of a woman named Emma Gould. The story of how Joe and Emma met is then told, beginning with a robbery by Joe and two others of a speakeasy in South Boston that turned out to be owned by a notorious criminal named Albert White. If the three had known...