Mystic River

Rating:
Summary: Lehane- Master of stunning character!!
Review: Mystic River is a dark novel that revolves around the lives of three young boys who are unlikely friends. Their lives begin to grow apart following the abduction of one of the boys.
As adults, their lives have all taken very different paths, but their paths recross after a tragic murder draws them together in a spiraling whirlwind of heartbreaking sorrow.
Dennis Lehane is a master of great characters, each one so clearly defined and so real. The writing draws you into the very disparate lives of these unique, dark men, into their homes, their thoughts, their fears and their loves. The book holds your attention, even when you want to put it down! The ending is stunning, not because it is not something you anticipated, but because of the deft way that Lehane crafts it and finely tunes it.

Rating:
Summary: Mystic River: A Novel
Review: Notice the title of "Mystic River" says "A Novel" and not "A Mystery"? That's because it really isn't one. Sure, someone gets killed and someone did it and we have to guess who. But figuring it out isn't too difficult, and, in the end, it all seems unimportant anyway.

The real reason to read this book is for the characters themselves and their tricky, sticky relationships with their neighborhood, their pasts, each other. And that is where the book is brilliant. These people are so well-drawn it's miraculous. And Lehane's prose is dead-on when describing their thoughts and feelings. There are no good guys and bad guys in this book. Like the real world, his characters contain goodness, evil, bitterness, generosity, hatred, love, disappointment. They're a big ball of humanity rubbing against each other in a changing neighborhood, the friction their encounters create slowly flaring up into an inevitable inferno.

If you want a good mystery, read something else. If you want a great study on the frailties of human nature told in blazing prose, by all means pick up "Mystic River."

Rating:
Summary: Great Concept, bad ending
Review: This is one of those books that gets you emotionally involved with the characters, pulling and twisting throughout. Then you get to the end and its just like hey lets make a real ironic twist from a bunch of nonsense. It was a great author trying too hard to make a memorable ending. Thats what ruined the entire book for me. There is nothing in the world worse than a great book with an ending that makes you go, what were you thinking!!!!!!

Rating:
Summary: One of the Greatest Crime Novels Ever Written
Review: "From the other side of the kitchen window screen they could hear the hiss of the beer can pull-tops, bursts of hard sudden laughter, and the heavy snap of Zippos as Mr. Devine and Mr. Marcus light their Luckys"

That sentence came at the bottom of the second paragraph. I read that and knew that this was a master writer at the top of his game. You have to go back to Farewell, My Lovely to find an opening so focused, so absorbing, so perfectly pitched. Are these 'likeable' people? Who knows and who cares? Judgments like that have nothing to do with literature. This is a great book with more real life and real people than the last half dozen Pulitzer prize winners put together.

Get this book, take your time, and take it in.

Rating:
Summary: Depressing, tedious, over-long
Review: You could tell the author is probably a good writer, but the story was depressing and used too much profanity, plus it seemed like it was never going to end! In a lot of places, the dialog was unrealistic and everybody spoke in the same conversational style. There were some interesting twists to the story if you could force yourself to read it, but overall it was tedious and dismal.

Rating:
Summary: Depressing, over-use of profanity, tedious and too long
Review: You could tell the author is probably a fairly good writer, but his extreme over-use of profanity (every other word is the "F" word!) is annoying and detracts from the story so much that after a while, I could hardly read it. EVERYBODY in his story talks like that - very unrealistic! And the whole story is so gruesome and depressing and goes on and on and on, that it became a real chore to read. I'll have to say NOT RECOMMENDED for this book. For sure I'd be too embarrassed to recommend this to anyone I know - it comes across as sleazy trash because of all the gutter language.

Rating:
Summary: A Major Disappointment
Review: As a fan of Dennis Lehane's previous novels - the Kenzie/Gennaro series - I looked forward to reading about new characters. His trademarks, the smart and crisp dialogue, the complex plots with twists and turns that don't always end the way you'd expect, the fascinating characters that are tinted with shades of grey and who make decisions that they don't always believe are the right thing to do, led me to believe that this new book would be as great as any of the earlier novels.

Sadly, this book has none of that. Characters that are boring, uninteresting, and, worst of all, flat and obvious; dialogue that sounds stilted and cliche; a plot that is transparent and predictable, all contribute to a book that is not a literary novel, but rather to a book that seems to have been written solely as the basis for a movie.

One of the great joys of the Kenzie/Gennaro books is that I could barely wait for the next one to find out what would happen next with them and Bubba. With the characters from MR, I couldn't wait to finish so that I will never have to hear about them again. These are characters who don't grow or learn over time, and see things the same way as 40 year old men as they did as 11 year old boys. Thank goodness this book is not the introduction to a series.

Mr. Lehane, please, bring back your great characters Patrick and Angie, so that we can all grow together.

Rating:
Summary: Compelling book
Review: This is an intelligent, well-written novel, with well-developed, complex, three-dimensional characters, none of whom are all good or all evil. It is both murder mystery and a realistic portrayal of the psychology of crime. The setting and mood are beautifully set down so that you feel as if you know these people, their lives and their neighborhood. I found myself thinking about this book and about its characters even when I wasn't reading it, and I looked forward to picking it up again as soon as I could. I really enjoyed this book.

Rating:
Summary: I'd say it was closer the 2.5 stars...
Review: I bought this book on tape after seeing the trailer for the upcoming movie, which was so compelling with such an impressive cast, and was a little upset that I didn't like the book more.
I'm not sure if it's because I listened to it on tape instead of reading it myself, which is something I've only ever done once before, but I figured out the ending. Plus or minus a few details I figured out very early who had done what and why. Maybe it was a fluke but I found the end to be very anti climactic and even a little upsetting after reading the epilogue. I was just curious if other people figured it out as well... or if maybe I shouldn't listen to books on tape anymore.
The characters were interesting, and really well developed, but now I question how the movie will incorporate so much inner dialogue. I just found the overall story to be a little too predictable, I suppose one could say that's not a sign of a poorly planned plot, but really impressive foreshadowing.

Rating:
Summary: Absolutely stunning!
Review: It is often that I read one book - possibly two in one day - so usually characters are simply "there" - they rarely seem totally real - the characters Lehane put together for "Mystic River," however, seemed to jump into my life. Thankfully, I could not relate to the characters (as they all have horrible faults), but the way Lehane skillfully crafted together every single character in his book simply mesmerized me. I simply could not put this down -- it all seemed so real. It is nothing like any other novel I have read ... when I finished I was asking myself "Was that fiction?" More than ever before, this book honestly put me in the town it took place, see every character, and even smell the river itself. If you simply want a "thriller," go to Patterson, Connelly, or Deaver -- if you are looking for something more in a novel that takes you on an emotional roller coaster ride that seems to last for a month in less than 400 pages ... go to Lehane, in particular "Mystic River."