Mystic River

Rating:
Summary: Betrayal Begets Betrayal
Review: They were three pre-adolescent chums in one of Boston's poorer neighborhoods in 1975. To call them friends might have been a stretch. Jimmy, the savviest of the three, suffered from what we might call today a conduct disorder. He engaged in risky behaviors that startled his two compadres and raised eyebrows of adults. Sean was brighter than the rest, though not smart enough to realize that Jimmy was stealing his prized items from right under his nose. Dave was what we would call today the nerd, struggling to prove himself worthy of the other two with poorly timed jokes and the other mannerisms of estrangement. They were a little pack, and if they had been animals instead of boys, the Discovery Channel would have commented on their strange interdependence for survival in the dangerous jungle.

But boys will be boys, and one day while scrapping in the street they are accosted by plain clothes detectives in an unmarked car who order them into the back seat for the perfunctory "scare `em good and call their parents" routine. Here we see the defining moment of their personalities. The pliant and thoroughly frightened Dave follows orders, but Jimmy and Sean could not help but notice that Boston's finest were looking a bit seedy that morning. Why, the back seat was littered with trash, for gosh sakes. It was as if the cops sized up the other two and vice versa, and both groups backed off with Dave alone in the back seat. Only later do Jimmy and Sean realize that they had let their erstwhile sidekick ride off into the unknown with hardened pedophiles. Dave would return four days later, to forever bear the invisible brand of damaged goods on his psyche.

Turn the clock ahead twenty five years, to a time when Pedro pitched every fifth day and Nomar anchored the Sox infield. The boys were now grizzled men. Dave had somehow married and survived his ordeal, on the surface at least. But he is not doing well professionally, and one senses that deep inside he carries the mark of Cain and the energy for a terrible day of reckoning. Sean had worked his way to detective rank on the Boston police force. Jimmy, not surprisingly, had taken the more sinister route. By the age of eighteen he was the acknowledged crime captain of his neighborhood, a poor man's Godfather. Married with an infant child, he had been pinched by the cops, kept his mouth shut, done the dime, and returned to his neighborhood in higher esteem than ever.

But now he wanted out of that business. His beloved wife had died, leaving him sole parent of a young girl who did not know him. Jimmy opened a legitimate concern and invested himself over the years in making a life for his beloved daughter, Katie. She had indeed grown into a fine young eighteen year old woman with enough of her father's spunk to occasionally do something stupid, like drink with her friends in a less than reputable neighborhood. It was on such an outing, the night before her niece's First Communion, that Katie's life would come to its tragic demise.

This grisly murder sparks a parallel investigation. Sean, of course, seeks the perpetrator as a matter of course. This, after all, is his life's avocation. The fact that the victim is the daughter of his old chum adds an emotional element, but Sean is all business. He is relentless, but he works in the civilized world of due process. His investigation is slow, painstaking, thorough, and in the context of what follows, not fast enough. He has a suspect in mind, but he works slowly and prudently enough that in case he is wrong, no harm and no foul.

Jimmy, alas, has no such encumbrances. He too seeks his daughter's killer. Coming out of retirement, so to speak, he has no worries about district attorneys and tainted evidence. Jimmy has a suspect in his sights, too. But even with his freedom of movement, he is having as much difficulty as Sean is until he receives damning information from about as unsuspecting an informant as one can imagine. In a scene worthy of a Hitchcock film, Jimmy hears what he wants to hear from a witness whose meaning is entirely misconstrued. Thus fortified, he becomes judge, jury, and executioner.

In the final tally, both Sean and Jimmy are wrong in their conclusions, though Sean has done nothing that can't be fixed. Jimmy, on the other hand, is responsible for multiple deaths, if one includes the psychological disarray of his informant. We say good bye to the neighborhood of Jimmy, Dave and Sean with the sense that Jimmy is dead, too. Dead to the years of decency when his Katie saved him from his worst criminal self. Jimmy, it is clear, bears no remorse. The worst may be yet to come.


Rating:
Summary: All I can say is WOW!
Review: This is one of my all time favorite books! I hadn't seen the movie, but recognized the name when I picked up the book at a local Barnes and Nobles. I could not put this book down. It was absolutely amazing. The description is outstanding and Lehane will keep you wanting more and more as you turn each page. I literally was staying up all night reading. This was one of those books that I was very disappointed when I finished it, because i enjoyed reading it so much. Soon after, we rented the movie. Although the movie is GREAT, the book is 100% better!!

Rating:
Summary: One Powerful Read
Review: Wow, I'm amazed with this book. I am only fourteen and i just finished reading Mystic River. It is an absolutely dark, depressing, gut-wrenching book and yet it was great. I definitely recommend this book. I'm so excited to read the rest of Lehane's books!