Rating: 
Summary: Excellent, one of the best books I've read all year
Review: People who gave this book only 1 or 2 stars are way off base. This book is excellent, a total page turner right from the beginning. But Lehane is so much better than your average mystery writer. He is one of the best author's I've read all year. I haven't read a book this good since House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III.
Rating: 
Summary: Starts good, ends crappy
Review: This book started out with a bang, but towards the end, I became increasingly disappointed with the plot, and the writing. Don't waste your money.
Rating:
Summary: grim - depressing - bleak
Review: I was a fan of Dennis Lehane and looked forward to Mystic River. Then I started the book and I realized he'd abandoned the Kenzie and Gennaro characters. I hated it; I didn't finish it; the unrelieved hopelessness and angst of these lives gave me a headache. Was this a movie-to-book commission? Hope the Hollywood money was worth it. I probably won't bother with another Lehane book. But, hey, Dennis - now the celebrities are gushing Mystic River is the very best book they've ever read in their whole lives - so who needs the readers who've been buying your books for years.
Rating: 
Summary: Gut-wrenching Tale!!
Review: Although not a complete Lehane fan, based on some of his other novels, I decided to give Mystic River a read before seeing the movie. I was not disappointed. This was powerhouse writing at its best. It's hard to call this simply a good mystery novel when it is so much more. It contains a complex, penetrating and melancholy plot that delves into some of the moral issues of our day. It reaches deep into the blackest of hearts and searches out the haunting results of childhood innocence lost. This book isn't just about child molestation, thugs, crime, mystery, and petty criminals. It's about evil and innocence, friendship and betrayal, love and guilt. It's about how our childhood experiences mold us into the adults we are, regardless of how hard we might try to fight it. This is a gripping tale and I found myself constantly going back and re-reading several passages to ensure that I fully understood all the plot twists and turns. Truly it is disturbing and there is ugliness in it, because there is ulgliness in human nature--and that may put off some readers. However, Mystic River represents a book that is well-written and intelligently plotted with good dialgoue. I would recommend it to anyone who likes crime or mystery novels.
Rating:
Summary: Hemmingway Level of Talent
Review: "Mystic River" may be a hard noised mystery, but the writer is something beyond that. His dialogue is so good it just cuts at you. With the twist of a word what other writers would make a cliche, he makes golden and biting. Hemmingway used to be able to do that with his books. Now and days the only one I see doing it is "My Fractured Life" but that's more of straight fiction that deals with death than a true murder mystery. But unless you count "My Fractured Life", then "Mystic River" is the only book that has that Hemmingway quality of writing right now.
Rating: 
Summary: Implausible and irredeemable story
Review: Too many loopholes and too many unanswered questions in a story that should have been tight. The three main characters bumble around, creating their own tragedies. The wives are pathetic, as are the police investigators. The story doesn't seem realistic, even if it is trying to portray the gritty underside of life. This is what's supposed to happen to people touched by child abuse? This is a new kind of vigilanteism? This is Boston in the year 2000?
Rating:
Summary: You Will Love This Book!
Review: I only first heard of the crime author, Dennis Lehane and his masterpiece, "Mystic River" after reading some critically-acclaimed media reviews of the just-released movie adaptation of his book. I immediately bought the book and was hooked right from page one!! Truly I have never read another thriller/crime fiction quite as powerful and mind-blowing as "Mystic River". Dennis Lehane just so... knows how to write. Every word does not just go to your mind, it goes to your HEART instantly. It is simply one of the most gripping and thrilling story out in print and I think what a loss it is to anyone who loves good books but has missed out on this one. There are 3 main characters - 3 boys with totally different personalities and family backgrounds but who are friends in the mid-1970s. One day, something awful happened to one of the boys while they are out playing in the street and this incident instantly killed their friendship. They grow up distant from one another, get married and have kids. One is an ex-con, the other a sad loser while the third becomes a cop. Two of them have devastating, tragic secrets which they want to keep at all costs. In present day 2000, their lives are inescapably tied together again when a girl is found brutally murdered in the park. If the men are tough guys and "scary", well, let me tell you that there are scenes where the womenfolk (i.e. the homely wives) prove that they can be tougher (emotionally) and "scarier"! Read to find out! This book is a real page-turner. Everything about it is so perfect that it will win over any reader - the plot, the characters, the exciting hunt for the murderer and especially, Lehane's brilliant writing that makes the characters and situations so real you feel they are happening around you as you read. There is clever wit too (very unique American humor which I enjoy reading) in the conversations and thoughts of the characters that provide some light moments and make you chuckle or laugh out loud. Lehane's book is also a marvel because it possesses such a sharp and spot-on observation of human characteristics and emotions that you know you could be reading the story from anywhere in the world but these characters could be REAL people from your own neighbourhood. The ending is anything but sweet (and satisfying?). But to me, it is just perfect because it is very like LIFE itself where things are not always fair or tied up neatly in the end. I cannot wait to watch the movie (which stars Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon, Tim Robbins, Marcia Gay Harden and Laura Dern). With such a dream cast, can the movie be anything but GREAT (like the book)? The last movie I watched which feature such a SOLID and reliable cast was probably "Magnolia". I think for "Mystic River", I have to wait for the DVD because this movie may not "make it" to my country IF it contains as much profanity as in the book. I truly enjoyed the book. Even after I have finished it, I still think of the story and the characters a lot. I am now a Dennis Lehane fan and will definitely read his other books.
Rating:
Summary: a good read
Review: For the first half of the book, the two parallel "mystery" story lines just go in circles. First there's the police investigation of Katie's murder, then there's Celeste's ponderings about just where David Boyle had been that night. The same facts and evidence are regurgitated over and over again. It's tedious. But eventually the story moves past that towards the resolution of the events of the story. While the crime is solved in a breathtaking and heartbreaking ending, ultimately the book has a sad and depressing conclusion. The solving of the crime doesn't really bring peace to any of the characters and the book ends on an empty note. Still, it's a moving story and despite a few slow spots, it moves along pretty good.
Rating:
Summary: Mysterious Mystic River
Review: I had no idea this was a book. I thought it was just a movie. I decided to read the book first, and I enjoyed Mystic River on many levels. Dennis Lehane is a talented writer. I didnt think that a crime novel could be poetic, but Lehane's prose has rhythm. The dialogue mimics how converstaions take place in the real world, and the key to his good dialogue is through knowledge of his characters. There is no presence of the author in this book, just his writing, and that's one of the best things about Mystic River. Lehane's writing style allows us to see his character's external mannerisms, and hear their internal thoughts. His descriptions of the Point and The Flats, the Pen Park and Mystic River give the reader a sense of direction,so they could navigate these areas themselves if they could visit. The mystery element was unexpected. I thought this book would just have characters regurgitating the story of a murder in a rough town, but the reader is investigating the crime along with the cops, and the families. I highly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: Not a bad book but....
Review: This was a very well crafted novel, the characters were interesting and very real, the language at times was somewhat vulgar though not contrived because it did fit the gritty nature of the characters (I can certainly understand the many readers who were critical about the book on this point.) The mystery aspect of the novel is pretty easily guessed by about page 120 or so, but by this time Lehane's character development is so completely intriguing that you don't care. The complicated relationships Lehane develops causes the reader to ask a lot of questions about trust and love and friendship. Without going into a micro analysis of the plot which so many of the other critiques have done, I have one very fundamental problem with this story. The entire tragedy (all 400 pages) hinges on the character of Celeste and her decision to go to Jimmy and not the police. For me at least, Lehane was very unclear about this. He hints at a vague sexual attraction that Celeste may have once had for Jimmy, but it is just that, a hint, and by all accounts in the previous 300 pages Celeste is a dedicated wife and mother, who is also a careful and deliberate person. So Lehane would have us believe that this careful, dedicated, thoughtful, loyal, deliberative wife and mother is going to go to Jimmy and essentially sign her husband's death warrant (thus rendering her child fatherless) because....because of a sexual attraction she may have once harbored toward Jimmy? I didn't buy it, and this aspect of the plot didn't work for me, a "real-life" Celeste would have gone to the police. In any event I would still say that the book is overall excellent in its craftsmanship and scope of emotion and definately worth reading.
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