Brighton

This gritty standalone from Harvey (The Innocence Game) focuses on two childhood friends who have gone in dramatically different directions as adults. Kevin Pearce starts life as an intelligent young man born into poverty and a brutal home life in 1970s Brighton, a hard-bitten section of Boston. Kevin’s best friend, Bobby Scales, is a violent urban Huck Finn who’s also capable and loyal. After Kevin’s grandmother is murdered in a grisly home invasion, Kevin and Bobby ambush and slay the killer. Twenty-seven years later, Kevin, now a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, discovers that the gun Bobby used to shoot his grandmother’s killer is the same gun used in the recent murder of an undercover policewoman. Kevin searches for the connection, which reunites him with Bobby, now a tough Brighton bookie. Harvey crisply evokes the dark side of the Boston urban underclass inhabiting a fractured neighborhood in a constant state of casual violence and brutality. An intense, twist-filled climax caps the unremittingly gloomy but moving story. Agent: David Gernert, Gernert Company. (June)