Shutter Island by
Dennis Lehane
hbk out May 03
Published by Bantam
at £12.99
The best writers aren't afraid to try something different. Dennis Lehane started out with a
chain of powerful, hard-boiled novels, strong on emotional bite, featuring private eyes Patrick
Kenzie and Angela Gennaro. He then wrote Mystic River, a stand-alone title examining the
savage and heart-breaking effects of murder on three former friends in working class Boston,
now adapted as a successful film. With Shutter Island, Lehane jumps back half a century to
summer 1954. US Marshal Teddy Daniels and his partner Aule have been sent to the island,
which houses a hospital for the criminally insane, to find an escapee: Rachel Solando, who
drowned her three children. Rachel has left a series of coded clues, she is trying to tell them
something about what really goes on behind the locked doors of the hospital and in the empty
yet heavily guarded lighthouse. As a hurricane threatens to devastate the island, the marshals
find unsettling evidence of forced drug experiments and eugenics. But it's not just the
inmates who are at risk, someone is trying to drive Teddy and Aule insane. There's a flavour
of The Twilight Zone here, apt for the era, but Lehane has crafted a fantastic, soulful, utterly
compelling read with a knock-out conclusion.
Manchester Evening News 22.5.04
(
Cath Staincliffe
author of the popular Sal Kilkenny mysteries set on the mean streets of Manchester)
Shutter Island by
Dennis Lehane
