The Given Day, by Dennis Lehane

This is the first Dennis Lehane novel I've read and I think I selected poorly. I was looking for a suspenseful thriller, which his earlier works apparently are, but with this book he was going for more of a "literary work." Unfortunately, "literary" appears to include a meandering plot and a main character who acts inconsistently and doesn't really believe in anything. I kept waiting to see what the book was really about, but I never found out.

Lehane brought up many potentially interesting themes--worker's rights, immigrant's rights, police men's rights--but the main character never took a consistent stand on these and so the book ended up not having any theme. The two mostly separate sub-plots involving a black man on the run after committing murder and Babe Ruth rising up to become a star were actually more interesting than the main plot because at least these characters knew what they wanted and fought for it (more in the former than the latter).

I plan to try one more Lehane novel, probably one of his earlier ones, and I'm hoping it's much more suspenseful. Lehane has a good style and can create interesting characters, but unless those characters do something that has an overall purpose, the books will be boring.