Rating: 
Summary: Especially about flounder
Review: I just read Dennis Lehane's "Shutter Island". This is the kind of book that doesn't really need a book review: I think you know whether you like or don't like books about hospitals for the criminally insane on remote islands without reading a review. Generally, I can pass on them, but I was so impressed by Lehane's "Mystic River", which far surpassed the limitations of its genre, I thought I'd give this one a try. True, it's harder to surpass the limits of the hospital-of-the-criminally-insane genre; you pretty much have to have ex-Nazis and lobotomies. And Lehane *does* surpass the genre, although satisfaction level will vary from reader to reader.
I have a few quibbles: I don't think people told how-many-x-does-it-take-lightbulb jokes back in 1954; that was an 80s phenomenon, and I'd believe it stretched back to the 70s, but no farther. I also don't think racial relations in the 1950's would allow the kind of black/white interplay that is necessary to the plot here. But these are minor complaints; the book stands or falls on your belief in the friendship between US Marshall Teddy Daniels and his new partner, Chuck Aule, and their interplay is beautifully rendered.
Still, there's a major problem with the book, and it involves flounders. In the book, there are these rats that are symbolically necessary to the plot, and someone describes them as being "as big as a flounder". Now you or I know that rats are "as big as cats"; that's the only proper way to describe a big rat. But all the characters in this book are haunted by the sea. They are on a remote island, remember. Many had fathers who were fishermen. The sea is omnipresent. Hence: the rat was as big as a flounder.
I don't know much about fish, but I do know that they never stop growing, so saying something is as big as a flounder is utterly meaningless. Plus, flounder are oval and flat. You'd have to hit a rat with a hammer and pound it before you could make a meaningful comparison to a flounder. On a remote island with a hospital for the criminally insane perhaps this could work if you had one of the inmates actually *pound* a rat. A guard could say "geez, that rat is as flat as a big flounder". But it wastes valuable time, and you need to be hurrying to the climactic scene where the hero breaks into the mysterious fenced-in lighthouse past the cemetary.
Did I mention the hurricane? Yes, this is a remote-island-housing-a-hospital-for-the-criminally-insane-while-a-hurricane-rages kind of novel. You don't need a review to know if you'll like it kind or not. Anyway, at one point, the author describes the devastation: "A single flounder lay flapping and puffing in the breezeway, one sad swollen eye looking back toward the sea."
OK. Look. How on earth can you describe one eye of a flounder without describing the other? It's not possible. Unless..... YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT A FLOUNDER LOOKS LIKE. Unless you are bluffing your way through the whole haunted-by-the-sea business.
Lehane is doing a lot of bluffing in this book, but he carries it off pretty well, Nazis, lobotomies, flounders and all.
Rating: 
Summary: Originality
Review: I usually figure out mysteries long before the novel ends, forgetting the whole story within six months.
I'll never forget Shutter Island where a physical map is not even half the layout of the land. Dennis Lehane took me down a winding road to total amazement. This will be the first book in the last fifty I have read that I will openly recommend to my friends -- the ones I want to keep!.
He combined literary depth of character with intricate plotting in a matrix of total deception.
If I would change anything it would be to trim the dialogue and reflection in the first third of the book.
Worth every minute of time devoted to reading this one.
Rating:
Summary: Top-notch psychological Thriller
Review: Dennis Lehane's new novel,set in a hospital for the criminally insane in the paranoid 1950s, hits all the right notes and proves to be an excellent follow-up to his critically and commercially successful Mystic River. My tastes run to moody suspense thrillers over gritty realism, so I found Shutter Island to be an even more entertaining read than Mystic River. As a pure exercise in writing and plotting, one could hardly find a better model of how to manipulate, mislead, tantalize, and ultimately, satisfy the reader. Those reviewers who have judged this novel to be shallow and devoid of serious moral impact, are simply wrong. Shutter Island provides a more stylized, but equally powerful indictment of violence and its impact on the psyche of the survivor as Mystic River. What a complex and fascinating protagonist Lehane creates in U.S. Marshall Teddy Daniels! What sets this novel apart from the run of the mill thriller, is the author's remarkable ability to weave the various threads of memory, guilt, delusion, and empathy into an absolutely compelling character. The plotting is ingenious! This novel takes the reader to a very strange place. I have seen hints of this sort of thing in a few other popular books and movies. Stephen King's Secret Window and the recent film Swimming Pool come to mind, but neither of those psychological thrillers ultimately pack the impact of Teddy Daniels' search for truth and justice on Shutter Island.
Rating:
Summary: What a Ride...
Review: I finished this book in two days! I mistakingly read the end at night in bed and found myself sleeping with lights on (no kidding!!). Get ready to have your reality turned on its side...BRILLIANT and a Must Read to anyone who appreciates a good suspense novel.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome
Review: Another amazing book by Dennis Lehane.Truly a stunner, Shutter Island sucks you in and won't release you until you've read it's shocking conclusion. It's a disorienting, disturbing, utterly absorbing, and rewarding experience, every bit as powerful as Mystic River, but in an entirely different way. Buy it, read it, enjoy it, pray you can recover from it.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: What a superb story! It begins in a vague manner and stays like that with heavy references to the Second World War and past experiences in that conflict which ties in well with the main charactor and his objective in finding an escaped murderess.
Lots of previous reviewers have complained about it not being as good as Mystic River but maybe they are missing the essential point that Mr Lehane as the verstile writer that he is not stuck in a rut writing the same kind of novel. Please enjoy this wonderful novel and wait for Mr Lehane's next intriguing book.
Rating:
Summary: Clear your calendar - once you start it, you can't stop
Review: I was a big fan of Mystic River but in my opinion, this one is even better. It is a truly original story with a combination of Sherlockian locked room mystery with Stephen King creepiness. I could not put it down. And the ending is a total surprise.
Rating:
Summary: I Read This Book In One Sitting!!!
Review: I couldn't put it down. And all of my errands and resposnsibilities were ignored. This book is fantastic!
Rating:
Summary: Amazing
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. I'm a definite fan. I highly recommend this book and two others for a good read "The Da Vinci Code, and "He Never Called Again."
Rating: 
Summary: Nope, nope, nope!
Review: As someone who has read and loved every other single piece of Dennis Lehane's work - almost fanatically - this book is a huge disappointment and hopefully not a harbinger of things to come. The plot is transparent, cliched, and the characters can neither be liked nor hated, nor anything in between - there is no complexity to this novel at all - I saw the end coming a mile away and could barely rouse the energy to finish it. At the end, I didn't care what was real or what wasn't, nor did I spend any time imgaining what could have happened next - I was just glad it was over and even considered putting back onto Amazon marketplace for sale which is nearly unheard of for me. I hope Lehane isn't letting his publishers pressure him to produce too much too fast - he has built an amazing reputation; a few stumbles along the way like Shutter Island are OK - I just hope they don't become the norm.
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