What’s it like when someone like Tim O’Brien, considered one of the best American writers of his generation and a potential Nobel Prize winner, praises the authentic sound of your writing? Right around the time I was struggling, Tim O’Brien - we were talking about books - said, “The thing I’ve always liked about your books is they’re authentic,” and I went home that night … and I remember sitting there and having my eureka moment. It was the 20 percent of it that was riding toward this false wish-fulfillment type of ending. Throughout the writing of the book I was unhappy, not going to lie. I struggled with the ending I would say since the original conception of the book. Right to the end, it’s not clear to the reader what the final outcome will be. World Gone By brings the Joe Coughlin trilogy to an end. There’s something about that that gives you a really weird proprietary feeling. I think some weird core principle is that these are my characters, you can buy my story, but you cannot buy my characters. So now Patrick and Angie are co-owned by a movie studio for perpetuity.

But it’s not like it’s going to have any sequels. It wasn’t a financial success but it was a wonderful film. They became the lead characters in a wonderful movie, Gone Baby Gone. Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro were characters in about six books of mine.

but if I were to make The Given Day or World Gone By I could just change the names. Live by Night is being turned into a movie by Ben Affleck, who has the rights to the names. I feel like there’s potentially another narrative avenue for The Given Day - a TV series or miniseries. So when I saw my friends emailing about getting the snow record, I thought, “What a bunch of sick bastards,” but I really dig it. It’s that sense of working-class pride, which, yeah, can be kind of annoying but can be really cool. You don’t really feel like something is fully worthwhile unless it’s hard-earned.

Bostonians, for better or worse, tend to like hard things. The final installment in a trilogy featuring Joe Coughlin, a cop’s son turned mobster, the book moves between Tampa, Fla., and Havana as World War II unfolds, offering an intimate story that deftly explores the personal toll the gangster lifestyle takes on its protagonist.

Dennis Lehane, 49, the quintessential Boston crime writer whose books have been adapted for the big screen by the likes of Clint Eastwood ( Mystic River), Martin Scorsese ( Shutter Island) and Ben Affleck ( Gone Baby Gone), returned March 10 with his new novel, World Gone By.

Dennis lehane ben affleck