Rating: 
Summary: SHUTTER ISLAND
Review: THIS BOOK WAS A DISAPPOINTMENT. DENNIS LEHANE IS AN EXCELLENT WRITER, BUT THIS BOOK WAS SIMPLY NOT OF HIS CALIBER. IF YOU WANT TO READ A BOOK OF HIS THAT YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO GET OUT OF YOUR HEAD, READ "MYSTIC RIVER". I READ IT SEVERAL MONTHS AGO AND IT STILL HAUNTS ME.
Rating: 
Summary: A twist on the old
Review: If only people realized that it is not enough for a book (or a film) to have a great ending to make it great. It needs more. It needs a solid beginning. It needs solid characters. And it needs adequate pacing and plotting to keep your interest through the whole thing. Dennis Lehane never had a problem with this before. As a matter of fact, his Mystic River was one of the best myseteries of the last decade (if not THE best). But with Shutter Island, he tried something different, moving out of the dark mystery field to create a hybrid story. Maybe he should have stuck with what he's best known for...Here, we have a detective who goes to the state prison/asylum on Shutter Island to investigate the disappearence of a female patient. Only, he and his partner stumble on something greater, something darker, and something that very might spell their demise. Saying too much about the plot would be to ruin a quick and slightly entertaining story, because everything seems to serve the ending. Yes, this is a book that reads well and fast. Yes, it does provide many very entertaining moments, and moments of intense suspense. But in the end, all of that just wasn't enough to save this book. Lehane is trying to up his position on the crime fiction list with this one. But this book does very little to prove to readers that he's the best at what he does. And yes, the book does have a great twist ending that you might or might not see coming, but that either isn't enough to save the book. In the end, Shutter Island is a slightly entertaining effort from an author capable of much better. I wanted more out of these characters and the situations they find themselves in. There is a lot of potential behind this story, but because the characters are so thin, it is never achieved. I wanted more out of the plot (the book is barely 300 pages long!). And I wanted more overall from Lehane.
Rating:
Summary: Unresolved mystery for me!
Review: Dennis Lehane's newest mystery is truly a mystery to me!!! On surface the plot seems simple - it's post WWII, two war veterans, now U.S. Marshals, set out to Shutter Island's mental asylum for violent criminals (or patients as Dr. Crawley insists) to investigate the disappearance of a patient who had no visible or reasonable means of escape. Their investigation soon meets a dead-end when the hospital personnel, doctors, nurses, and orderlies are less than cooperative with necessary information. Meanwhile, Lehane introduces many other themes: How does violence shape humans, especially combat veterans and criminals; an historical look at psychiatric treatment in the 1950s and the argument between two schools - surgical intervention vs. psychotropic drugs; secret operations programs to test different drugs on the mentally ill; racial inequities; the fear of reality; and, finally, when does personal pain become self-deception. With that many themes the book seemed cluttered without sufficient time to develop all of them satisfactorily for the reader. Without the thematic developement on the part of the author, it left me wondering why it was included in the book. Characterization was bland and robotic especially of the professional staff at the asylum. The 50's setting could have been interesting if there had been more thematic development to tie it all together. But it all felt unresolved. Dialogue was sometimes vague and irrelevant, and again, why were some things introduced to the reader, e.g., Marshal Aule's difficulties because of a Japanese-American girlfriend - it served to explain why he had been newly partnered with Teddy Daniels, but it was almost unbelievable given that it was 1954 and I'm not sure our society was sensitive enough to reassign a U.S. Marshal based on a racial issue. All in all, a somewhat disappointing, unfinished attempt that failed to effectively connect all the themes that were introduced. I truly love Dennis Lehane and have read all his books, but this one fell short for me.
Rating: 
Summary: Jumping Out Of My Chair
Review: This is a really powerful thriller. I liked all the twists and turns and was sad to have it end. A fun weekend read.
Rating:
Summary: "Shudder" Island
Review: Dennis Lehane has a way of creating a setting that does half the work of telling his story without his having to hammer home the themes. Patrick and Angie's familiar and familial home turf and Mystic River's divided neighborhood in transition are now joined by the creepy and isolated Shutter Island of Lehane's new novel. Once protagonists Teddy Daniels and Chuck Aule set foot on the island to investigate the escape of a female patient from the asylum/prison housed there, you know they're in trouble and you're in for a whale of a thriller ride. Inescapably surrounded by ocean, electric fencing, and too many guards, Teddy and Chuck ride out a hurricane in a place where it's difficult to distinguish the inmates from their keepers. As always, Lehane's characters are pitch-perfect, from his lead investigators down to the various orderlies and patients who play fleeting roles. Teddy's and Chuck's dialog is snappy and funny, even as the mysteries within mysteries evolve to induce maximum paranoia and confusion. This is a terrific book that will leave you scratching your head and wondering why you didn't see the ending coming.
Rating:
Summary: I give more then 5 stars
Review: Lehane IS THE MAN....Another fantastic book...More twists and turns then a pretzel factory.....There's no one better then Lehane, hands down. Read it, read it, READ IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Rating:
Summary: The torch has been passed from Grisham and Crighton
Review: Admittedly, I am not an avid reader of mystery or intrigue books. With mysteries, I have tried many of the authors those fans tend to enjoy, but have always stuggled making that necessary "leap of faith" needed at some point. So, other than the occasional John Dunning or Hillerman book, the longest I've been able to stay "intrigued" by one of these books has been somewhere through the half way point. That said, not since early Grisham have I been so enthralled with a book as I have been with Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane. In spite of the tremendous attention Mystic River received, I never picked it up. With the tremendous writing exhibited in Shutter Island, I am reconsidering picking up everything I can get my hands on by Lehane. Lehane starts working his psychology on the reader from the beginning as he isolates the two marshalls, Teddy Daniels and Chuck Aule on an island which bears the book's name. The premise, early on, is to find one of the patients/prisoners who has escaped. They are required to give up their firearms only pages later, something that would have me saying in a theater, "Don't do it!" Page after page is filled with their own baggage, personally and after combat, code breaking, psychology and all its evolutions, trust in a time of distrust, and on and on. If you are looking for a page turner and to read a book from Lehane who has taken the torch from the likes of Grisham and Crichton, pick up Shutter Island.
Rating:
Summary: I am in awe of this novel
Review: Once in a while a book comes along that just transcends any praise you can think up for it. Lehane has done that with this newest novel. It's really a shame that it has to be classified as anything in particular -- mystery, thriller, whatever you call it, it goes beyond that. I write novels for a living. I'm pretty successful at it even, and that's partially because I can handle a plot and understand something about the importance of subtlety and leading the reader toward unexpected turns. But I'll never pull off something like this. I can think of a very few authors (living or dead) who could. The combination of tremendously fine-tuned plotting and beautiful prose and a truly heart-rending characterization (because there are elements of the classical tragedy in this that ring in perfect pitch) is a rare accomplishment indeed.
Rating:
Summary: An incredibly haunting mystery......
Review: I was under the impression that Lehane could not not outdo 'Darkness, Take My Hand' or 'Mystic River,' but this novel is simply brilliant. It is a mystey that will shock you throughout and leave you gasping for air with the twist at the end. What a novel!!!
Rating:
Summary: You will be discussing this book for quite some time!
Review: Readers approach an established author with expectations. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Those expectations help keep readers familiar with the author, while recommending the author to friends and attending book signings --- all of those good things. So what does one do when a favorite author not only steps away from established characters, but also takes a familiar genre... and tinkers with it a bit, and thus transforms it into something else? This is precisely what Dennis Lehane does with SHUTTER ISLAND, a book very different from what he has done in the past and also different from what others laboring mightily in the mystery and suspense idiom have done. Lehane made his bones with five novels featuring the duo of Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro. His last novel, MYSTIC RIVER, was a departure from those characters but still covered the same territory that Lehane has demonstrated an intimate familiarity with, that being modern-day, working class Boston, through the prism of the detective novel. SHUTTER ISLAND is a totally different animal. SHUTTER ISLAND takes place not in 2003 but in 1954 and not in Boston but in view of it --- in Ashecliffe Hospital --- located on Shutter Island, an island with a history dating back to the Civil War. The tale is told through the eyes of U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels, the son of a fisherman, a man whose life has been marked by tragic violence and sorrow suffered in quiet silence. When we meet Daniels, he is on his way to Ashecliffe Hospital to investigate the disappearance of Rachel Solando, one of the patients. Her disappearance is significant because Ashecliffe is not an ordinary hospital, but a treatment and holding center for the criminally insane. The island is accessible only by ferry and there is simply nowhere that Solando could have gone. However, as Daniels and Chuck Aule, his newly acquired partner, begin their investigation, it is immediately apparent that all is not right. The doctors who run the hospital are not entirely cooperative, the assistant warden seems to be more obstructive than not and the warden is an enigmatic character who, within the brief period in which the reader makes his acquaintance, is quite frightening. But to say that nothing or no one on SHUTTER ISLAND is as it or they seem to be is an understatement. And when Solando reappears as suddenly as she vanished, it is a signal that the mystery is only beginning. But SHUTTER ISLAND is more, far more, than a mystery novel. The last chapter of this book will cause you to read it again and again, and then reread the entire novel. All is revealed, yet all remains obscure. SHUTTER ISLAND is a genre-bending novel that is as absorbing a book as you are likely to read this year, combining the best elements of Agatha Christie, Eric Ambler, Philip K. Dick and Dennis Lehane. Readers will be discussing this novel --- and its ultimate revelation --- for quite some time. Very highly recommended. --- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
| 
