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Summary: Mystic River
Review: This is a riviting novel. More than just a "who done it", but rather a many-layered exploration of love and hate, fear and courage, revenge and forgiveness. Evokes the locale of urban Boston to great effect, but the story is universal. I will certainly seek out and read Mr. Lehanes other books. He is a top notch novelist.
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Summary: A first-rate detective story with memorable characters
Review: "Mystic River" unfolds slowly but compellingly, pulling us into its blue-collar environs, sprawling parks, broken lives and scarred psyches. On one sunny afternoon, Jimmy and Sean watch as their friend Dave is driven off in a strange car, smelling of apples, with two men claiming to be police officers. After four days, the boy escapes his captors and is returned to his unnerved family. Amidst a spontaneous neighborhood celebration, three lives have been propelled onto a collision course. Twenty-five years later, the cop, the ex-con and the family man find their paths crossing again after a gruesome murder. They find themselves inexorably drawn closer as the murder exposes personal and professional fault lines in the community they reluctantly share.Lehane's strong suit is getting inside of the heads of his characters and showing you what drives them, while still preserving the element of the unknown that propels the story forward. In this world, bad guys don't wear black hats - chances are, they sport BoSox caps and live quietly next door. The good guys are few and far between, and even they may be powerless to do anything but clean up the mess and wait on justice. The seemingly inescapable cycle of victim and perpetrator churns on with tragic consequences. Ultimately, the question the reader wants answered isn't really Who? but Why? You'll get your answer, but it may only leave you with more questions. You'll want to find out what happens, but you may enjoy yourself so much in getting there that you won't want it to end. Would that there were more writers, "mystery" or otherwise, who could spin a story as skillfully as Dennis Lehane.
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Summary: A master of his craft
Review: Just when I thought he couldn't get any better, Lehane has surprised me with this wonderfully written story about friendships and a darkness that lies just beneath the surface in all of us. I read this book in record speed and closed this book with wide eyes surprise. You don't want to miss this one.
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Summary: Great page turner!
Review: I am a new reader of Dennis Lehane and I am hooked! From the first page I was taken in by this novel and I could hardly put it down. A very good mystery, but still enough clues to help you figure out who "done it" before the end. I will most definitely be reading more Dennis Lehane novels!
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Summary: Dark and powerful
Review: In his sixth novel, Lehane departs from his popular, edgy, noir PI series featuring the hardboiled Dorchester duo Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro. "Mystic River" takes place around the murder of a promising, beautiful Dorchester girl and centers on three men, friends as boys, whose lives intersect again over the murder. In the 1970's Sean Devine (the more affluent), Jimmy Marcus (the hellion) and Dave Boyle (the hanger-on) spend their Saturdays in the streets together until one day a car stops and two men intimidate Dave into going with them. His abduction and escape change everything. Twenty-five years later Sean is a Boston homicide cop, Jimmy is a reformed ex-con who owns a neighborhood store and Dave Boyle is still a sad sack, haunted by the shame of his old trauma. The night Jimmy's 19-year-old daughter is murdered Dave commits a bloody crime and the subsequent news of the girl's murder leaves his wife in an increasing state of dread and suspicion. Did her husband murder Jimmy's daughter? Assigned to the murder, Sean finds himself mired in the intimate details of his old friends' lives and dwelling on the past they share. The murder's aftermath frames the portrait of a close-knit (outsiders unwelcome) community in the throes of anguish. Driven by the expectations of family and friends and his own anger and grief, Jimmy seeks the murderer to mete out his own form of justice while Sean, under the auspices of the state, invades his friend's grief and his family's private moments and Dave, exulting in his cathartic act, tries to maintain a shell of normalcy. Harsh, tender and painful, beautifully written, "Mystic River" explores the psyche of a neighborhood and how the individual is shaped by belonging, exclusion and class. Building to a dark, explosive, fateful climax, it's also an intense, insightful portrait of three men and the inner forces that drive them.
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Summary: Easy to understand why this is a bestseller
Review: Better than the story, are the characters in the story. This author has a very real way of describing people. It's hard to let them go when you finish the book. I found myself wishing I had his powers of observation but maybe it's better not to see people so deeply. The story takes off right at the beginning and I could not put it down. This is one of the best mysteries that I have read in a long time.
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Summary: Another hit by Lehane
Review: I first picked up a Lehane book in the supermarket top 10 section, Prayers for Rain I think it was. After reading the newest in that series I had to go back and read all the others, and I was not disapointed. I was waiting for a new book in that series to come out so when Mystic River comes out I wondered if we will see Kenzie and Genaro again or what ? Well I really loved this book. I felt the charactors were very developed, and they felt very real. He does a great job of relating the feel of East Bucky Flats as well, not that I have ever been there. LOL What I can't figure is why so many reviewers find this a bad book. Any book should be taken for what it is, not compared to what you think it should be, or want. So what it's not another Genaro book. It's a dark story, so what, that doesn't make it a .... Sometimes life is a dark story, look around. Sometimes, at the end of the day, the nice policeman who is the crossing guard down the block, goes home to drown his sorrows in a bottle. Sometimes the guy who runs the store on the corner is an ex con. Sometimes the President gets ... favors from a girl half his age in the corner. Somebody has to write stories about those people, it might as well be a great writer like Dennis Lehane. So I'm sitting here waiting his next masterpiece.
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Summary: A Rare Mystery
Review: This is one of those rare mysteries where the author lays all of the clues in front of you and virtually wills you to solve the crime. Rather than hide the killer until the last moment, we are fed clue after clue and if you're good enough (I wasn't) you should be able to work out who done it. As well as being an excellent mystery which had me guessing until all was revealed, it was also a sometimes poignant commentary on how we might deal with loss - both through death and separation. I urge anyone who loves a good mystery to try to solve it before the author makes the revelation.
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Summary: Soulful Mystery
Review: I had never read a Dennis Lehane book. I picked up this one after reading a review in EW that praised the book as one of the best of the year. I didn't know what to expect, I didn't have any preconseptions about the author. I started the book a few days ago and I just couldn't put it down! I understand that Lehane is a crime/mystery novelist, but Mysitic River is much more than that. This is a mystery novel that has a soul. It has an emotional denisity that we rarely find in novels of this genre. It grabs you by the gut from the very first page and only lets go of you on the final page. In Mystic River, you have three childhood friends who are reunited by the gruesome murder of a young woman. Something horrible happened to one of them when they were younger, and the shadows of that event still haunt them. As the murder investigation, progresses, the three friends become entertwined, but not always in the ways you'd expect. One of them becomes the prime suspect, the other is the father of the deceased and the last is the cop who is doing the investigation. Rarely have I seen characters so fully fleshed out and realistic. It's like you've known these people all your life. They breathe, think and act like we would. Their dialogue is sharp and realistic and - and this is probably the book's best asset - simplistic. Rarely do I read a book where EVERY single character feels real and three-dimensional. This is one book you won't be able to put down. You'll want to read it from cover to cover in one sitting. Lehane created a wonderful work of fiction which is dramatic, suspenseful and mysterious all at once. Mystic River will end up on many best of year-end list for 2001, so don't miss out on this wonderful, amazing book!
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Summary: WHAT A DISAPPOINTMENT!
Review: Oh Dennis, just stick to your brilliant crime fiction with Angie & Patrick. Please leave the Stephen King-esque story lines to Stephen King. I was eagerly awaiting this book by the brilliant Mr Lehane and when I read the back cover, I realised it wasn't about his usual suspects - Angie & Patrick, but I figured, it is still a Lehane, it's got to be good, right? WRONG! This book is so boring, I only finished it because it was written by Lehane, but basically the story involves 3 boys who grew up together - Dave, Sean and Jimmy. After a good opening, Dave gets into a car and disappears for a few days, when he finally returns, his disappearance is not dealt with and we fast forward to 25 years later where Sean is a cop, Jimmy owns a store but has done a stint in prison and Dave is trying to deal with what happened to hiim 25 years ago. Now, the premise is great but this is the sort of thing that King would write and do it 50x better. It could have been good, it could have been great but it wasn't, there are too many questions, not enough answers, a very weak ending and it is basically a very boring book. If you are after excellent Lehane, do yourself a favour and try anything else he has written!
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