Lehane's latest delves into the Florida underworld during Prohibition

Dennis Lehane's new novel "Live by Night" follows Joe Coughlin, the son of a Boston police captain, as he becomes a successful and powerful bootlegger in Ybor City, Fla.

"The attraction of the gangster myth is that it's capitalism laid bare," Lehane told NPR News. "We see these guys who are doing all the terrible things that we believe that a lot of corporate America are doing, but at least they're upfront about it. And so, while that is maybe splitting hairs, I think there's something slightly more admirable about Joe Coughlin than say, you know, the guys who rig the system so that they could ... lay waste, not only to this country but to the globe back in 2008."

The Christian Science Monitor reports Ben Affleck will write and direct the film adaptation.

UPDATE (4/17/13): Dennis Lehane wrote an op-ed in The New York Times in response to the Boston Marathon bombing. He writes, "Boston took a punch on Monday -- two of them, actually -- that left it staggering for a bit. Flesh proved vulnerable, as flesh is wont to do, but the spirit merely trembled before recasting itself into something stronger than any bomb or rage."

LEARN MORE ABOUT DENNIS LEHANE:

• Dennis Lehane widens his world of words. Boston Globe profiles Lehane: "Not content just to be a purveyor of entertaining pulp, the Dorchester native is turning the page, trying his hand at stories with a grander historical sweep."

• A life in writing: Dennis Lehane. Interview with Lehane in The Guardian: "I'll always be fascinated with loss of innocence or corruption of the soul at a young age."

• Interview with Dennis Lehane, Novelist and Bostonian. Interview with Lehane in Literary Traveler: "As far as the writer as an outlaw, I don't think we're actually very good — or a lot of writers I know are very good — at toeing the party line, if you will, and we are sort of the square pegs and the world is the round hole."

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