Rating: 
Summary: Excellent read!
Review: I read. Alot. This book is one of the few times I actually put a book down and had to absorb what I read instead of flipping it to the side and picking up the next. Mystic River was tremendous this was better.
Rating:
Summary: Psychotic, paranoid Schizophrenic
Review: Let me see...Two detectives, one island; a troup of Psychiatrists: friendship, a hurricane, a magic disappearance, guns,cigarettes, liquor, coffee, family, murder and deceit. And that's just the main plot. Sub-plots; you'll have to read it to believe it, and believing it is disbelieving. After all, it's just entertainment, don't take it to heart. Believe me, from one experienced psycho patient in a world of disorder comes order. And in a world of order comes disorder. Read it and enjoy.
Rating: 
Summary: why the 4-star average?
Review: After reading this wonderful novel, I have to wonder how anyone could give it less than a five-star rating. Lehane does characters better than any writer I've come across in years, knows how to build suspense that has you holding the book in a white-knuckle grip, keeps tricks up his sleeve that you never see coming and by God, he knows how to lay down the prose. There are many writers out there whose books I love to read, but when it comes to Lehane, I'm always waiting for the next one. Read "Shutter Island" and I'll bet you'll feel the same way.
Heck, read any Lehane and see if you aren't eager for more. Go ahead. I dare you.
Rating:
Summary: Please, ignore the idiotic negative press.........
Review: ... This is a book that should be read by anyone that enjoys suspence, and themes that explore the darker sides of humanity. If you enjoy a truely wild ride, then do yourself a favor and get a copy of this beautifully written Lehane thriller.My first meeting with Lehane was in the form of "Mystic River". This was an absolutely fantastic book (which became a very disappointing film, thank goodness I read the book first or I would have missed out on a world of amazing literature). From there I attacked all five of the McKenzie/Gennero novels, all of which are brilliant in their own way. Next came Shutter Island. This is a book that I read twice in the same week. As I closed the back cover of my hardback copy I closed my eyes and tried to piece together everything that I had discovered. I read the book a second time, this time gaining much more clarity and seeing things that one CANNOT see upon the first read. At the closing of the second reading, I still reread several sections and let it all sink into my imagination and understanding. Wow, what a rush. This book is not hard to undrestand, but it is IMPOSSIBLE to have forsight. There are many directions this book could go, but the path that Lehane chooses is the only plausible and unpredictable path available. In it's hash reality that is brutally described, the reader (this one anyway) is forced to deal with emotions and reactions to those emotions that might shock themselves. How would I react to this or that?? Am I any different than Teddy or Chuck?? I asked myself this several times during the corse of the book as I thought about the amount of tragedy and suffering I could truely endure. How do people cope with such devestation and suffering due to pain and utter loss?? Maybe the same way that Teddy does?? Perhaps. In closing, IGNORE the press that tries to compare this fine book with other Lehane books. Yes, it is different! Yes, it is not Mystic River (perhaps better??!). It is not the same as the five Mckenzie/Gennero classics (in this brilliant mans opinion). For that matter, why does it have to be. STOP comparing and deal with it for what it is, BRILLIANT and ENTERTAINING! HOWEVER, it is an absolute thrill to read, and an epic canvas for a grand performance to be displayed. As for the ending, NO COMMENT. Enjoy the last paragraph for yourself, but don't cheat and skip to the end, YOU WON'T GET IT! Enjoy yourself! Read this book! It will certainly be your loss if you don't! Steve
Rating:
Summary: Teddy Daniels is in BIG BIG Trouble.
Review: U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels has been sent to Shutter Island to find a missing patient. A simple chase down the clues, add them and solve the mystery kind of book. Yeah, right. The premise of this novel is to assume that nothing is as it seems. Teddy Daniels walks into a nightmare that slowly builds intensity like the hurricane descending on Shutter Island. His new partner Chuck is a great side kick, but not much help. Then there is the code of 4 that shows up. (Take a minute and puzzle out what is going on here.) Subtle hint, the number 13 has a lot to do with everything, especially Teddy. To discuss the plot is to ruin the plot. This is a masterful job that will have you looking for more. A must read.
Rating:
Summary: (4.5) Face to face with pure evil?
Review: Shutter Island is the kind of scary that creeps up, slowly, taking its time, compounding the menace. Marshall Teddy Daniels and his new partner Chuck Aule come to Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane in 1954 to find an escaped murderess, Rachel Solando. There are varying levels of patients at the hospital, the worst of them in Ward C. While conducting their search, unaided by top hospital personnel, Teddy mentions the loss of his wife, who died in a fire two years earlier. The arsonist responsible for that fire is currently held somewhere in the facilities, possibly in Ward C. Chuck expresses his concern that Teddy hasn't told him everything about this visit, his possible desire to seek out and confront the arsonist, Andrew Laeddis. Add to the mix a hurricane bearing down upon the island and no outside communications and the stage is set. Then a patient slips Teddy a note that says, "run"... All this is merely window dressing, the bare bones plot. The truth of this terrifying novel is purely psychological and devastating. For this reader, visions of Jacob's Ladder and Carrion Comfort loom, novels equally as frightening in this particular, and exclusive, genre. Lehane is the master and the characters are his puppets, beautifully manipulated through the halls of an institution where mental patients run amok, friends become foes and nothing is what it seems. In a heady mix of possibilities, hallucinogens, Nazi surgical experiments, torture, death and the ready tricks of a damaged mind, Lehane navigates through a mélange of terror that uncovers the most basic of human fears. Teddy Daniels comes face to face with his own demons, realizing too late that he ignored the warnings all along the way. Quickly infected with Teddy's paranoia, the reader is helpless as the intrepid Marshall forges ahead, unstoppable. This is not a story for the faint of heart, but Shutter Island is unquestionably a must read. Just don't make the mistake of thinking you've figured it out...Luan Gaines/2003.
Rating:
Summary: Lehane got the psychology right
Review: My daughter just visited for Christmas, bringing with her a copy of Dennis Lehane's Shutter Island she had gotten from the library. She suggested that I read it, as she had liked it and thought I would. Boy, did I. As a biological psychologist and a historian of psychology, I consider myself knowledgeable about the development of psychosurgery by Egas Moniz in the late 30s and the pharmacological revolution in the mid1950s. This came about with the discovery of chlorpromazine (Thorazine), the first of the so-called major tranquilizers, actually the first of the antipsychotics. At any rate, I found the medical issues completely plausible and loved Lehane's writing from the first page. Teddy was completely convincing to me, and I was totally sucked into his world. The ending, which I won't divulge, shouldn't have been as much of a surprise as it was, as Lehane had certainly foreshadowed it at several places in the book. Bottom line: Loved it. I disagree absolutely and totally with the reviewer who found it unconvincing and worthy of just 1 star.
Rating:
Summary: WoW! Stunning book!
Review: As a big time reader of mysteries, I consider myself hard to please. This book did it! Outstanding characterization, easy to read, and fast paced, this would have to go on my top 10 list for 2003. What a great ending! Looking forward to more from this young author!
Rating: 
Summary: Improbable, unbelievable, unconvincing...and shallow....
Review: It is totally improbable that a staged event such as this, or any, would be allowed in a mental institution housing the USAs most violent criminals and then allowed to continue after 10 men were injured by the target! Get real.
Who's insuring all these employees against injury and death. How'd they get all the employees to play along, and act convincingly? Did they have rehearsals? :o) I liked one sentence. It described the string music playing in the background of a WWII german concentration camps'
commandant's office as "crawling around the walls like a spider. I could hear (given the state of audio in '45) and visualize the
creepiness of that room with the commandant setting there in his chair when Teddy broke in during the liberation of the camp.
Rating:
Summary: So, who is really criminally insane here?
Review: Lehane will take you on a magical mistery tour this time. Enjoy the trip while you can because this will lead to a "bad trip" for sure! While Teddy gets to the Shutter Island, you start to think that there is a big brother watching him everywhere (is there? is he ever getting paranoind?). As Teddy's truth is the only truth you have all over the book (until THAT twisting final), you start to ask yourself who is really the criminally insane after all (The "patients"? The staff? The marshalls themselves? Are you getting insane with them? Or Lehane - Well, after reading the book the sensation is that Lehane deserves a Pulitzer, and then, be sent immediately to Asheciliffe as DANNIEL SHEEN...). And going back to the 50's, start thinking about your average prozac as "radical aproaches", and lobotomies, as usual procedures... This is an Orwell's 1984 with the difference you can't tell if big brother exists outiside the nutters heads (and your own, even after turning over the last page - so, does that make you a nutter?). Is it about deception or redemption? Or both? Who's the bad guy here (is there really one)? This book will leave you with more questions after reading it then before. Not questions about the story,no, no. The type of questioning you do after going trough a nervous breakdown and surviving it. The type of questioning Teddy would do to himself. And that's what make this book HUGE. As said all over the book: "You can leave Shutter Island, but Shutter Island will never leave you"
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