Rating: 
Summary: A Different Lehane - Again
Review: First there were the noir detective books. Then "Mystic River", which was 70-80% different. "Shutter Island" is a 100% switch from either of those. I was fortunate enough to purchase mine at a book signing where Lehane answered questions for about an hour. He has taught writing extensively and is a very patient, cordial and articulate inverview (not all writers speak well). Lehane said something that helps understand all his work, but especially this one. He said his stories are about people who strive and strive for what they want, only to wind up with what they need instead, and is makes their soul whole. "Shutter Island" is a very tight (we know what the main character, Teddy, knows - period), freightening story. Still, Lehane laces his outstanding literary skills and fantastic story line with his usual humorous passages, and his wonderful, punchy descriptive metapors. "Shutter Island" is not literally a haunted castle story. All the characters are "real" (human) and there are no ghosts or other-world beings. But it is absolutely, positively the best haunted castle tale I have ever read. This book goes on my list of all-time favorites.
Rating:
Summary: Mind Bending
Review: Best way I can describe is mind bending and disturbing. In Mystic River, Lehane dealt with a lot of moral ambiguity and gray areas. In Shutter Island, the question is whose reality and set of facts to believe. Any description of the plot would give too much away. You won't be able to put this down but if you like nice, tidy endings this is not for you. Lehane is simply a great, unique writer.
Rating: 
Summary: Very disappointing!
Review: Coming after Mystic River, this is a big disappointment. I found it tedious and by the time I reached the conclusion I no longer cared what reality was. Dennis Lehane is a terrific author, but this book is not up to his standards.
Rating:
Summary: No Man is an Island???
Review: That this book comes from the same pen as the charming and throughly enjoyable series starring Pat and the Gang is amazing...I found Shutter Island to be pretentious, boring, confusing; there were few, if any redeeming qualities. It was not the good story told well that i have come to expect from this author. Bring back Pat and the gang in another excellent story told well.C. Williams
Edgewater, NJ
Rating:
Summary: Excellence
Review: The reviewer who wrote that this story does not stay with you must have gotten their reviews mixed up. I have read 2 pretty good books since reading Shutter Island and I still cannot get the story out of my head. Not only is the story great, the ending is...well just read the book. I went out and picked up a few copies for some of my friends who do not read quite as much as I do just to have people to talk to about it. Lehane's 2 year publishing absence actually was disapointing, but man was this novel worth it. If I was to aspire to write like someone it would be Dennis Lehane. His command of the language is unsurpassed in the genre, and when you add this to everything else he does very well it puts him right near the top of the game. I think I will do something I rarely do, that is to go back and read it again just to see how he set this bad boy up.
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 Foreboding, Depressing Story with a Five Star Conclusion
Review: It is Hurricane Season 1954 and U.S. Marshall Teddy Daniels and his new partner Chuck Aule have arrived on Shelter Island in Boston Harbor shortly before the arrival of a killer hurricane which is almost as menacing as the events which they are sent to investigate. The island houses a former civil war installation (and lighthouse important to the story) which has been transformed into Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane. They are there to investigate the escape and disappearance of Rachel Solando, an inmate patient at Ashecliffe who murdered her three young children. There are cryptic codes to be unraveled and bizarre and unexplained happenings that are very unsettling to Teddy and Chuck. Furthermore, Teddy has a personal agenda to pursue while on the island and his own demons to confront. The medical staff seems very secretive at times, and Teddy and Chuck soon conclude that they are being manipulated and that a substantial portion of the truth is being withheld from them. They also becomes concerned about the possibilty of secret experimentation being performed at the facility. The book is set at the time when controversy was rampant regarding the effectiveness of different treatment modalities for the mentally disturbed - traditional psychotherapy versus physical methodologies (lobotomies and electroshock) versus the newly emeging experimentation with psychotropic drugs - and discussion of these alternatives is an integral element of the plot. Unfortunately, this discusion was quite limited and superficial, probably in an attempt to maintain the fast pace of the action but at the expense of the possibility of a much richer and more nuanced although somewhat lengthier story. The book is a very fast read, it contains a lot of dialogue and with the exception of Teddy most of the character development is limited to the minimum necssary to advance the narrative. Given the nature of the patients' and the staffs' personalties, often caricatures were sufficient in any event. Until the conclusion, I was wavering in my rating between two and three stars, but the shocking (althogh still depressing ) conclusion completely changed my view of the story and the author's technique. It also led me to believe that some of his storytelling methodology which I disliked was integral to the mood which he had been trying to create. (This is my first Dennis Lehane novel so I had no preconceptions.) In retrospect, the ending is foreshadowed, but as a reader caught up in the story the misdirection certainly worked on me. The closest analogy I can give is to the movie SIXTH SENSE, which you need to see again to reinterpret all the clues. This book is not nearly as well done, and the final chapters actually review a lot of the misdirection for you, but the impact for me was the same. Interestingly enough, a perusal of the thirty ... reviews available as I submit this review indicates that a clear majority of readers came to my conclusion but the reaction of a significant minority ranged from lukewarm to very disappointed. There are twenty-one five star ratings and in a real oddity no one until now has rated it four stars; the other nine reviewers came to the conclusion that it deserved only one to three stars. I definitely recommend the book but felt that the depressing nature of the subject matter and my desire for a more detailed story with more deeply drawn characters kept it from deserving the unqualified endorsement that five stars implies.
Rating:
Summary: I really didn't see that one coming!
Review: Shutter Island is a sneaky one, I have to tell you from the start. Two US Marshalls arrive at the isolated mental institution to find the missing patient and things go in strange directions from then on.
Obviously, I won't tell you how it ends, but I didn't see it coming!
Rating:
Summary: Another Winner from Lehane
Review: This was a great book! I loved the setting--1950's insane asylum on an island during a hurricane. I see that other people are complaining that this isn't Mystic River. No, it's not, but that's what makes Lehane great. He is a versatile writer that doesn't just write the same book over and over like other authors. Mystic River was completely different from the style of his series. And Shutter Island was a completely different style than Mystic River. All of his books are well-written and absolute gems.
Rating:
Summary: Dazzling..
Review: but difficult to review. So much of Lehane's latest, "Shutter Island", is tied up in the twists and turns of plot, that to write a review that summarizes the plot is tantalizing -- but will spoil the book for the next reader. Lehane apparently became an afficianado of old Sinatra, causing him to write the noir-ish "Shutter Island", set in 1954. The book is about the handling of psychiatric patients in those days, terrifying as THAT is. Lehane's two main characters are U.S. Marshals, sent to investigate the disappearance of a woman "patient", who'd been held in the Island hospital for the criminally insane. Although Lehane truly develops only one character in the novel, Marshal Teddy Daniels, his deft ability to describe the motivations of others, and to electify with descriptive phrase of his setting leave you feeling that he just may be the best novelist in America today. "The lights went on above them in a series of liquid cracks that sounded like bones breaking underwater. Electric charges hummed in the air and were followed by an explosion of yells
and catcalls and wailing...." -- it'll be tough for you to get much sleep with Shutter Island in tow. It was a fast read and I sat up far into the night to finish it...and then could not rest. Like in his characters, Lehane sets up a momentum and a fear in you that won't let you forget this book for days. I'm not surprised to see the wide variety of ratings given the book -- the best generally are controversial. Read it and judge for yourself!!
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