Brooklyn native William Boyle sets his latest novel in Gravesend, a changing part of the New York borough. It has the hallmarks of a classic, reminiscent of great American novels like Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River, and cements Boyle’s reputation as a master of noir.

Full review: https://westwordsreviews.wordpress.com/2025/03/03/saint-of-the-narrows-street-william-boyle/

This family saga was something I could relate to, coming from a big Italian family. However, I just felt this was too long and got boring. It picked up at the end.

Published by ‎ Soho Crime on February 4, 2025

Saint of the Narrows Street is a story of people who are searching for identities to replace their lost lives. What happens to people who lose their dreams, or who never have dreams to chase? Near the novel’s end, Fab ponders that question when he walks into a seedy bar: “The joint’s a real den for degenerate drunks. All he can think is they were once little kids. Stood in schoolyards and mouthed the Pledge of Allegiance. Ate their sack lunches. Said their prayers.”

Fab is only eight months old when the story begins. Risa, his 28-year-old mother, has already made a life-defining mistake by dropping out of Staten Island College and marrying Sav Franzone. Sav thinks Risa is boring. In an abstract way, he’s proud that she gave birth to his son, but he’s already itching to split. Sav is out most nights, drinking and cheating on Risa with Sandra Carbonari.

One night Sav comes home drunk with a gun and a plan to travel to Florida with Sandra. He waves the gun around, points it at Risa and Sav, packs a bag, and gets into a fight with Risa’s sister Giulia. As he’s choking Giulia, Risa hits him with a cast iron pan. Sav hits his head on the corner of a table as he falls. Risa calls Sav’s childhood friend, Christopher “Chooch” Gardini, who comes over in time to watch Sav die. They haul the body away and bury it on rural land that belongs to Chooch’s mother.

The story follows the main characters as they live troubled lives for the next eighteen years. Risa lives with her guilt by telling herself that Sav would have killed her or her son if she hadn’t killed him. Chooch lives with his unrequited love for Risa and his feeling that, unlike his father, who “had an identity as a New Yorker and as an Italian American,” he has nothing but the property he inherited from his parents. Giulia lives a life of dissatisfaction, broken only by a drunken yet memorable sexual encounter with a woman.

Collateral characters contribute to the theme of broken lives that end in violence. Sav’s brother Roberto returns a few years after stealing money from a vengeful man and running away with his wife. A drunken priest with a gambling addiction tries to blackmail Risa with his half-formed hunches about her role in Sav’s disappearance. When he’s ten, a young troublemaking friend of Fab goads him into “living on the edge” until the friend pays a price. Optimistic people believe it's never too late to start over, but some people are perpetually “pinned forever to the void of this moment, the terror of regret.”

Saint of the Narrows Street gives the impression that some people were born to lose. Sav and Fab, Roberto and the gambling priest, fit that profile. Other people might be able to live fulfilling lives but, for reasons of their own, go in the wrong direction. Risa, Giulia, and Chooch never took the risk of looking for a better life. By the novel’s end, they’re in their forties and wondering what’s left.

The story culminates with Fab’s search for his absent father. Conversations with Sandra and other people who knew Sav offer clues about his father’s fate. Tension mounts as Risa realizes she can no longer hide the truth about her father’s death from Fab. But how will he react to the truth? Will all the central characters come to a violent end?

The story is bleak, but only because it takes an honest, unflinching look at certain kinds of lives — the lives of people who are stuck, who have abandoned hope or never had any. Poignant takes on characters (Risa thinks her father’s “version of God seems to have nothing to do with love and everything to do with shutting the door”) sharpen their personalities. Sharp prose and full characterizations contribute to one of the strongest novels I expect to read this year.

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The review for the last book I read by William Boyle read thus: Warm, funny and accomplished.

Well. This, his newest title, is not warm or funny. It is certainly accomplished. Boyle succeeds here in rooting the reader in a physical sense of place and his characters are believable, complicated and sympathetic. This is a story of decisions and consequences and regrets; it is dark and sad and achingly real. It is not warm and funny, but moving and rewarding.

In 1986, Risa is a young mother in Brooklyn who kills her no-good husband Sav with a frying pan. She, her sister Giulia and Chooch (who has a life long crush on Risa) decide not to call the police, but to bury the husband on Chooch’s upstate N.Y. property. They tell everyone that Sav has run off and abandoned his family, which is not out of character. That bad decision haunts them, Risa’s infant son Fabrizio and the extended family for decades.

The blurb for this book describes it as “thrilling” and “ tragic”. It is not thrilling. It is, however, tragic in the sense that the murder engenders an endlessly bleak story. I thought that the book was monotonous, but I kept reading to see what the bad thing was that was obviously going to happen to Fabrizio.

The book is written in the present tense, which is not my favorite style. It also has a lot of references to Brooklyn locations, which are meaningless to anyone not living in Brooklyn. I don’t think that is the way to add a sense of place.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

The best Boyle book so far and that’s saying a lot because I’ve loved all of his books(hence why he is one of my favorite authors of crime fiction) We’ll written, fast paced, historically accurate, intelligent, grea characterization, and most importantly a great story. Read it. You’ll love it.

Boyle presents a fascinating character study of three individuals - one who has committed a crime, and two who helped cover it all up. They concoct a story, and it is believed by family. friends, and the authorities. On the surface, it appears that the perpetrators have gotten away with it, and maybe they can finally put that horrible night behind them. But, reality quickly sets in. Now comes the REAL WORK - maintaining the lie.

Little do they know that their lifetimes will be spent . . . maintaining the lie.

Tragic, sad, and utterly compelling, Boyle's book is one you won't soon forget.

A difficult read because of the subject A powerful story of families and their secrets and their impact on everyone.

This intense family drama begins in Gravesend, Brooklyn-1986. Risa Franzone is a young wife and mother of an eight-month old baby. Unfortunately she is married to a loose cannon of a husband, who is not only unfaithful but dangerous. One fateful morning a tragic accident happens in their kitchen, during an ugly argument. This day will haunt Risa for the decades to come, along with her sister and a longtime friend who had helped her in the aftermath of this unfortunate event. The writing is solid. Fans of Dennis Lehane will like his style and approach. My problem with the novel was how relentlessly grim it became. I kept hoping for something bright to shine through the dismal haze but it never came.

*Thanks to Netgalley for an advanced e-galley.

Absolutely loved this book ! The voice , the characters, the story were all 10/10 for me . I had heard great things on social media prior to its release and was not disappointed .

I’m generally not one for tragedies, but this family saga/crime novel is so compelling and well written that I enjoyed it in spite of how incredibly depressing it is.

Whether this is truly a crime novel depends on how you define a crime, at least in terms of the initial event that sets of a tragic series of consequences. What happens afterward feels, for the most part, a bit more clear cut in that regard, if no less compelling.

At its heart this is a morality tale about how our actions have consequences, however unintended those might be and however noble our intentions may be. It’s about when good people do bad things for good reasons, and how our inability to control others’ actions may mean that however aboveboard our own intent may have been, we can’t count on others to act accordingly in the aftermath.

I really loved the principal characters in this, which makes it all the tougher to read what befalls them as the novel unfolds. But it’s such a good story that it’s worth it. And perhaps best viewed as a cautionary tale about seeking a fairy tale ending to an ugly story.

Thank you to SoHo Press and NetGalley for a copy of this. In Saint of the Narrows Street we follow the 18 year aftermath of a crime committed. This was tense, shocking and I raced through it. A refreshing take on a crime story as we know who done it straight from the off. What unravels from that creates a deceitful, evasive narrative that will have you hooked!

Gritty mix of a domestic drama and a crime novel where the death of a father reverberates through the lives of the two sisters involved, their family friend and the child. The books covers decades of life in an Italian-American part of Brooklyn, and you can smell the spilt beer and cigarette smoke in every page. This reminds me of a George Pelecanos or Richard Price novel, and feels like what Boyle has been building towards his entire career.

Secrets drive life in William Boyle's lates superb character-driven novel. The consequences of a split-second act - Risa hitting husband Sav over the head with a frying pan after he threatens her, her sister, and her infant son Fab - reverberate in this tale of legacy and, dare I say, doom. Boyle's work is masterful. The characters will stay with me long after I read those last words: "...pinned forever to the void of this moment, the terror of regret." Saint of the Narrows Street is the direct descent of Greek and Shakespearean tragedies. Readers looking for the best in literary fiction will not be disappointed.

This was BLEAK. If Shakespeare wrote a grand tragedy and set it in contemporary Brooklyn, this might be it. Stunningly crafted and not for the faint of heart.

The year is 1986, and the place is Gravesend, Brooklyn. Risa, a devout and sincere young mother, is married to Sav, a bad boy and renowned local scoundrel. She’d been warned it would all end in tears, that Sav wasn’t the kind of guy she should hitch her wagon to. But he was handsome, funny, and just a little dangerous—she couldn’t help herself. She’d found him irresistible.

The area where they live, with their eight-month-old son Fabrizio (Fab), is largely populated by people of Italian heritage. Here, everybody knows everybody, and everyone knows everyone else’s business, too. Then, one night, everything kicks off between Risa and Sav. It’s a night that really does end in tears. There’s a death—a violent one. The repercussions will clearly be huge: everyone will know, charges will be brought, jail time will be served. Or then again, perhaps not.

This is a story about a close-knit group of people—Risa, her younger sister Giulia, and Chooch, a close friend of Sav’s—who decide they have no choice but to keep the death a secret. We track their lives over a period of eighteen years. Short periods of time are scrutinized intensely, punctuated by long stretches where we learn nothing. Is it possible for such a dark secret to remain hidden from prying eyes all this time? There are certainly those who have suspicions, but suspicions are all they have.
As time passes, the focus of the narrative shifts. Sometimes it centers on the three central characters (four as Fab grows into adulthood). At other times, it turns to others connected to this small group: friends and relatives of Sav, people with some skin in the game.

The gaps in the timeline created by the author are holes that are not filled. We don’t know what happens during those periods—we’re not told. We can only observe the actions and discussions in the here and now, piecing together what we might have missed. Initially frustrating, it soon becomes apparent that this clever construction allows the tale to renew itself, with new elements coming into play. Each section contains a twist—a truly stunning surprise. The story moves forward, but now nudged in a subtly different direction.

The overall mood is certainly melancholy—one might even say gloomy. There’s a distinct lack of good news here. Yet, the changes brought by time and circumstance make it anything but a dispiriting read. In fact, I believe it to be quite the opposite. It’s a surprising and, at times, thrilling ride through a large chunk of these people’s lives—lives lived in a near-constant state of pretense, with the fear of discovery always lurking in the background.

How you feel about the main protagonists might change along the way—it did for me. So, too, might the way you hope the endgame plays out. It’s a shocking, surprising, and thought-provoking tale that will likely stay with readers long after they turn the final page.

Thanks for the ARC Soho Crime and NetGalley!! I'm a big fan of a bunch of Soho Crime books, and you almost never see the ARCs on here, so I was excited to get this one. It did not disappoint. What an amazing story. Every character felt so real, as well as the neighborhood, and getting to live with them through the three different time periods watching the evolution of it all was amazing. It's hard to right these things without spoilers, but the ending, while not being what I was hoping for, really tied everything together, showing the echos of generational trauma in the neighborhood. This has set a high bar for 2025 books. I will be reading more by William Boyle!

The consequences of an accidental murder kept a secret are at the heart of Saint of the Narrows Street, the new novel by William Boyle.

Risa Franzone, mother of eight month old Fabrizio, accidentally kills her abusive husband Saverio when he attacked her sister Giulia in a drunken rage.. Torn over what to do, they contact their friend Chooch, and rather than report a killing done in self defense, a decision is made to bury the body in upstate New York on Chooch’s family’s property., and concoct a story about Sav’s disappearance. The reader then follows the course of events over the next eighteen years, and how the reverberations of this secret affect the lives of Risa, Giulia, Chooch, and especially Fab, who desperately wants to find his supposedly missing Dad.

The writing is top notch. Despite this book being more of a character driven narrative, I could not tear myself away. Not only are all the main characters well developed, the author brilliantly brings the Gravesend section to life. My only complaint is that some of the plot developments in the middle sections seem a bit forced. While this didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the book, it did knock a star off my rating.

My thanks to the publisher and to Netgalley for providing an ARC of the book.

Thank you NetGalley,Soho publishers and author,Wm.Boyle,for the opportunity to read the ebook,Saint of the Narrows Street. This is one of the better novels I’ve read recently.The initial outline of this story did not appeal to me but it seemed to get good reviews from most others that had read it. Once I started reading,I could not put it down!
Story takes place in the 1980’s and for the following 18 years. It takes place in an Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn,N.Y.,where we’re introduced to a group of interesting characters,barflys,tough guys who control neighborhood gambling back rooms or clubs,church going/religious attendees with Catholic school nuns and priests.The main three characters are two sisters and their male neighbor who are the best of friends.The novel concerns them and ,an accidental murder and the cover up of it over the 18 year period that affects one of the sisters and her new born son.
Publication date,February 04,2025

Boyle sets his novel back to the familiar streets of Brooklyn NY. The Gravesend neighborhood where Italians have settled. Here the working class are challenged daily with life and crime. When a married women with a baby has a gun pointed at her by her lousy husband it sets off a chain of events unimaginable at the time.

Boyle nails the vibe, the scenes and the moods in this novel. He is fantastic and all should be reading his novel. Great, great stuff.

BTW: when do the Irish get there turn with Boyle?