Brighton audiobook

The town of Brighton is close enough to Boston to be a city neighborhood which was also a rough neighborhood back in the bad old days during the 1970's forced busing. Michael Harvey's working class Irish residents were not the liberal young college grads that populate the gentrified Brighton today. Harvey's brilliantly drawn characters are trying to survive and hide the sins of their youth from their hard luck neighbors, friends, enemies and themselves. Kevin Pearce, an investigative reporter for the Boston Globe, escapes Brighton for Boston leaving his sisters and best friend Bobby Scales behind. The murder of an undercover cop forces Kevin back into Brighton 25 years later to confront a related cold case, a possible serial killer and his own past. This is one of those rare books that hits you like an NFL linebacker. Much more than complex, page turning crime fiction, Harvey's prose captures the thinking, the attitudes and the tribal loyalty of his Brighton characters from that time and place in a stunningly effective way. The title reads "Brighton" but the locale could just as well be Somerville, Malden, Charlestown, or South Boston. My recommendation: drop what you're reading now and jump all over this book. It will be the best mystery and the best book you read this summer and maybe this year. It's Michael Harvey's breakout novel to date and in my opinion, a crime fiction classic.

Brighton, located in the northwestern corner of Boston has been the venue of many true-life criminal acts. Earlier this year a man known as the Brighton “Tree Ninja” used the cover of night to covertly chop down his neighbor’s trees in their own front lawns as they slept like babies in their beds. And back in 2014 there was a particularly diabolical fellow known as the Brighton Tickler, a serial tickler who would break into houses and surreptitiously tickle the feet of (male only) sleepers. While these deplorable criminals and their nefarious stories torn from the pages of the Boston Globe would more than make for riveting reading, Michael Harvey has chosen to go another route, with his excellent crime novel Brighton.At fifteen, Kevin Pearce was on the fast track; a baseball star and an A+ student he was well on his way to making something spectacular of his life. But then in a flash of misguided vigilante justice, a man dies and Kevin flees his family and home. His best friend Bobby Scales is left behind to face the crime-ridden streets alone as well as any ramifications from their secret act of violence. 25 years later, Kevin, now a reporter for the Globe is finally back home in Brighton, investigating the murder of an undercover cop. A crime that ties into his own past. A crime that connects to Bobby and the events that drove him away decades ago. As he digs deeper, Kevin begins to fear that the past he worked so hard to escape never went anywhere. Brighton is a heck of a lot of fun. You don’t believe me? Well maybe my friends John Grisham and Stephen King who freak out about the greatness of this novel on the book jacket like I do when I spot a spider in the basement might persuade you a little more. Harvey’s writing is evocative of the early work from George Pelecanos (back when he was posing for the author photo on the inside book jacket in a white wife-beater tanks) and Dennis Lehane (think Mystic River), where the sense and influence of story’s setting is just as important as the characters’ actions.The power of family and even greater, the power of your community permeates the story and it’s players. That you can’t escape who you are and where you come from-- which in many instances here is the same thing is the message. Not that Kevin and the other characters don’t try. The location is sharply drawn, the characters are honest and the violence is damaging. Harvey effortlessly manages to juggle multiple characters as their stories merge into a taut, tension-filled, and tragic conclusion that William Shakespeare would be proud of. Sure there’s nobody sneaking into bedrooms and tickling the feet of slumbering men, but Brighton is still a riveting read and a book that deserves to be read by many many many people.

This novel is an instant classic, which I read slowly to savor. Harvey is one of the most beautiful of all prose stylists but he is also a storyteller of great power. The setting and the characters in this book, set in Boston's Brighton neighborhood in the 70's and beyond, follows the paths of two boys - after a family tragedy, one becomes a prize wining journalist and one becomes a bookie and career criminal. While it bears a resemblance to The Departed and Dennis Lehane's great Mystic River, Harvey is telling his own story. He's a gritty storyteller who also finds poetry and meaning in what he writes about. I have long been a fan of his, but this book is absolutely exceptional. If there is a better book published in 2016 I would like to read it.

Great book. Suspenseful and thrilling. Sympathetic characters. Reminiscent of the best by Dennis Lehane. Only bad thing about finishing a Michael Harvey is the wait for the next one.

I enjoyed this book and found the twists to be unpredictable. Its possible it gained a half a star or so because it is set in my neighborhood, although the culture described in 2002 couldn't be more different than what I experience in 2016. I'm not sure if things have cleaned up a lot in the last 14 years, I am naive, or its just a matter of fiction melding with reality. In once section, the author specifically describes the street where I live: "...parked on a hilly side street full of shitty apartments rented out to students and even shittier apartments reserved for Brighton's illegals." Well, Michael Harvey, you can add young professionals who read your books to that list.

Tough Boston-Noir reads like a cross between The Wire, Denis Lehane's Mystic River and Johnny Depp's film, Black Mass, about gangster Whitey Bulger. Set in two time-periods it overflows with family violence, corruption and gang action. A page-turner that pulls the reader along for a hard, jolting ride. - BH.

Michael Harvey is best known for his Chicago mysteries, but he sets this one in Boston where he grew up.It's a taut thriller, and I will try hard not to give away essentials that will ruin the twists and turns. Kevin Pearce grew up in the title neighborhood, full of poor Irish-American families where the common theme often was hard drinking abusive fathers combined with long suffering, protective women. As a rising young baseball star, Kevin just wanted to learn to drive, make it to the pros and have some luck with women. Instead, he finds himself confronted with a horrible crime and a thirst for revenge.He does seek out his revenge, and might not have made it out alive from that crazy gamble if not for his older and much tougher friend, Bobby Scales. Bobby does what needs to be done and then makes sure Kevin is hustled out of state and kept away from any of the aftermath.Flash forward several years, and Kevin is a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter for the Boston Globe, having exonerated a black man for killing a young woman, unfortunately only after the wrongly convicted man had died in prison.Suddenly, though, Kevin's new life and old life collide, when he discovers through his prosecutor girlfriend that there are connections between the killing he investigated and the one he himself was involved in (his girlfriend is unaware of his role in the earlier killing). In the meantime, his old friend Bobby has become a bookie and a prime suspect.Complicating matters is a desire by a branch of the Mafia in Providence to move in on the territory that Bobby now runs.Where it will all end, who is responsible for the growing list of killings and how Kevin and Bobby work out their futures -- you'll have to discover that for yourself. Harvey provides plenty of twists and turns that are plausible, plus strong, non-stereotyped portrayals of the main characters.Well worth the read

Brighton is a gritty whodunit murder mystery wrapped in the backdrop of a working man’s crime story – and I loved every minute of reading it. Michael Harvey has been compared to Elmore Leonard, and high-praise aside, that’s a fair enough assessment. Harvey generates seedy characters aplenty, writes quick, crisp dialogue with a lightning-fast plot. But man, I see Dennis Lehane’s worthy handy work all over the place like fingerprints in a Southie brothel. The Boston setting aside, Harvey, like Lehane, paints the environ in unflatteringly-realistic hues. The potholed streets, the weed-infested parks, the dirty benches, and slophouse pubs. Homes aren’t just lived-in spaces, but overused and dilapidated. Everyone in the neighborhood is working on con, even if that con is simply staying alive while commiserating over a Sam Adams, while the sky above is eternally gray and cold.The mystery brought forth in Brighton involves the murders of a number of different women, similar in class, perhaps, save for one. Newly-crowned, Pulitzer-winning, investigative journalist/walking cliché Kevin Pearce takes on the task of putting clues together, even though most of those clues point to his childhood buddy Bobby Scales… as well as himself. Craziness ensues and the mystery runs as deep as the 70s while Harvey snares you as reader, making each chapter-break a mini-cliffhanger prompting you to read on and on throughout the night and to hell with that 8 AM marketing call you have scheduled for the next morning. Yeah, Brighton pounds you like the Bruins D and makes you ask for more.I’ve been to Boston all of two times in my life. After reading tales such as these, I should have no desire to return. Although, I think I do. I want to walk these mapped-out roads, and throw back a shot of Finnegan’s at some Market Street hole. To be haunted as I roam the cobblestones. But I could definitely live without having to be murdered to enjoy the story.

I don't know what to write, to be completely honest. This novel has left me completely speechless. There are truly no words that would do justice to this amazing, wonderful, powerful novel. I just wish it hadn't have to end. "Brighton" is a masterfully written novel about loyalty, betrayal, people who will do anything out of love and loyalty, others out of cold, evil hatred. About a world where people who care suffer, and those who take advantage of the people who are loyal and caring. It's about one horrible decision that will affect and destroy people lives 27 years later, as events come to a very satisfying, touching end. The narrative, prose, writing style and descriptions are all done to the nth degree. There are some beautiful, mesmerizing metaphors and descriptions of feelings that will blow your mind away. Like I said- no words will do justice to this wonderful novel. Five out of five starts.

(4) This book starts off a little snoozy and very dark, but from there, it is all twists, turns, action and stomach turning events. This is a terrific mystery, very family based, and full of Boston flavor, culture and characters. Don't skim a page of this one or you will miss something important going on. The way the characters seem to come back to each other in different scenarios is remarkable, and I can assure you, you will have a hard time putting this one down. Really good stuff.