Rating: 
Summary: One of the best thrillers I've read in a while
Review: "Shutter Island" is the first book by Dennis Lehane I've ever read. I heard about this book from a movie Website. Apparently Wolfgang Peterson (director of Air Force One, and In the Line of Fire) has optioned this book to be turned into a movie. Reading this book, I can say it would make a FANTASTIC movie. But I digress...Dennis Lehane's prose is very well paced; secrets behind every corner. Plot twists abound, but I can't say the whole book surprised me because I thought of just about every scenario Marshals Daniels and Aule could get into. At first I thought the premise of two US Marshals looking for an insane, escaped murderess on an island during a hurricane was a little to zany to work, but man, I'll tell you, the whole book is so well done! And I was TOTALLY satisfied with the denouement. The dialogue really grabs you. Its funny at times, heartbreaking at others and completely true to life. Kudos to Dennis Lehane! Now I'm gonna have to go back and read his previous works, and I can't wait!
Rating: 
Summary: A Very Good Read, But...
Review: First of all, let me warn you; several people who have written reviews for this book have spoiled the surprise ending in their reviews, an amazingly unpardonable act in my opinion. Do not read the review by Robert Hazelwood if you intend to read this book and don't want the ending spoiled.
Now, on to the book itself. Shutter Island was as well-written as all the other Dennis Lehane books. The premise is interesting; a pair of US Marshals are sent to an island which houses a facility for the criminally insane in order to track down one of the escaped prisoners during a hurricane. The book has witty, well-drawn characters, a gloomy setting, and plenty of ingredients for a real hair-raising thriller. There are several very creepy scenes and the whole feel of the book is bleak and moody, almost like a haunted house story. The surprise ending was, I thought, well-done and made the book very unique compared to many other bestsellers.
The book did, however, have its flaws. There are some important people and events who are mentioned early in the book but are very quickly glossed over, then when they appear later on you have no idea who they are because Lehane fails to remind us. The book also suffered from its pacing; it's a short book by today's standards, only 360 pages, and I felt that it should have either been far longer, with more detailed explanations and more creepy scenes which took advantage of the scary setting of the novel, or it should have been much shorter---this book could easily have been a novella, actually, running no more than about 100 pages.
All in all, though, Shutter Island was an enjoyable book which will give you the shivers while you're reading it and haunt you for several days after you're finished. This would be a perfect book for a plane trip or a day at the beach.
Rating:
Summary: This Would Make a Good Movie
Review: I enjoyed Shutter Island ~~ it was a quick read. I read it because I enjoyed Mystic River so much and found it to be a much different style of storytelling. By the middle of the book, I could not wait to see how it was going to end. The ending is very, very different then I expected and I still have some questions and loose ends I'd like to have answered. I did enjoy Mystic River a lot more, but I really do feel Shutter Island would make a very good and suspensful movie (that way I could see if the ending is as I thought it was). A good read for the mystery buffs.
Rating:
Summary: Help !! Could you please explain me the end ???
Review: I immensely enjoyed Mystic River (5 stars de luxe...) and jumped at the occasion to read again a book by the same extremely talented author. But I didn't understand the end of the book (may be my English is to blame - not my mother tongue), that's why I rate it only 4 stars.
Is someone out there capable of decoding the end for me ??
Rating: 
Summary: Where are Patrick and Angie?
Review: I know Lehane from the four detective stories featuring Patrick and Angie. I still remember the first sentence of his I read: "A piece of advice: If you follow someone in my nieghborhood, don't wear pink." The Lehane I knew wrote like Raymond Chandler - tight prose, clever dialog, and street-wise metaphors.
I suffer the first 30 pages of Shutter Island. The only mystery so far is what's up with Lehane's. Not satisfied with one banal opening sentence, he gives us two - Prologue and Chapter 1.
He gives us time as a series of bookmarks that one flips between, memories that inhabit the brain like lit matches, silken velvet, islands that grip the scalp of the sea, globes of oxygen, and sentences that run on and on and on and on and on and on.
A character who has just thrown up spends a paragraph describing a sea-worn mirror. The same character has "a dull ache ... just behind his eye, as if the flat side of an old spoon was pressed there." Flat side of an old spoon, what's that? Doesn't sound
that painful to me. And what about migraines that "turn light into a hailstorm of hot nails."
The story may be as good as other reviewers say, as good as one expects from Lehane, but please don't expect Lehane at his best.
Rating:
Summary: In a league of his own!
Review: I love my job but never have I regretted its low wages as much as I do right now because after having read "Shutter Island" (my first Dennis Lehane experience) all I want to do is rush out and buy every single other book he has written. The story takes place in 1954 when two US. marshals arrive on Shutter Island off the Boston coast to investigate the inexplicable disappearance of one of the patients of the hospital for the criminally insane which is located on the island. The chief physician and the rest of the staff are unhelpful to say the least and the more that the two marshals look into the whole affair the stranger it all gets. Something is definitely not as it seems and perhaps their reason for going to the island isn't what it seems either...? Every time you think that you've got it figured out the story takes another turn and draws you in even further and you wouldn't be able to predict the ending to save your life. All of the elements as such have been seen before but it's not what he does that makes this book great, it's how he does it. How he puts it all together and creates a book which is absolutely mind-blowing. Everything fits together just right and is just where it should be and the ending, although it is sad, is the only proper one. There may not be such a thing as "perfect" in literature but this is close enough to kiss. Read it, read it, read it! :)
Rating: 
Summary: An exercise, not a novel - but great for a movie
Review: I really think I read this book. But I might be on LSD in an insane ward and tricked into dreaming that I read it. Either way, it was entertaining up to the end. Except there wasn't an end - only loose ends. The author just gave up, leaving countless red herrings flopping around. Though I might be imagining those too. I did skip all the WAY TOO LONG hallucination sequences, unless it was all a hallucination.
I wouldn't bother to read / hallucinate this story again but will be glad to try another one by Lehane. If it was by him and not by me.
Rating:
Summary: Okay, but just okay
Review: I'm a little baffled by all of the adoring reviews this book has received. Yes, "Shutter Island" has a twist ending, but you can see it coming from a mile away (particularly if you grew up watching endless reruns of "Twilight Zone," "Thriller," and "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," as I did). To make matters worse, it isn't a particularly well thought-out twist; there are loose ends left dangling everywhere.
I was also thrown off by Lehane's numerous anachronisms. The book is supposed to be set in 1954, but there are references to items made of plastic, contemporary phrases like "anger management issues," a discussion of the hospital's "electronic security system," etc. Silly me -- I thought these were CLUES that the story wasn't really taking place in 1954 at all! Turns out Lehane is just lazy.
"Shutter Island" is an enjoyable pool or airport read, but that's about it.
Rating:
Summary: L O L
Review: I'm not reviewing Dennis Lehane's book. I'm reviewing Robert Hazelwood's review of Dennis Lehane's book. His is the best and funniest I've read by any of your customers - or by any of your editors for that matter. This is exactly how I felt about this book but Robert said it so much more cleverly than I could.
Rating:
Summary: My favorite Lehane!
Review: I've read everything by Lehane (though I found his series rather farfetched), and I definately liked Shutter Island the best. Yes, it's very different, but I really dig all the the twists and turns. It's great that he's trying something totally different. Not enough authors do.
This was the first book I read by Lehane, so I didn't know this at the time, but he didn't include his usual amazing, thought provoking prose that is plentiful in his other books, such as Mystic River.
Lehane has shown his proven his obvious talen for writing again and again. Now I hope he can write a book that is more realistic, or thought provoking, than his previous novels have been Patrick Kenzie novels have been, but also include his thought provoking style.
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