Monday, November 23, 2009

Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane

The year is 1954. U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels and his new partner, Chuck Aule, have come to Shutter Island, home of the Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane, to investigate the disappearance of a patient. Multiple murderess Rachel Solando is loose somewhere on the barren island, despite having been kept in a locked, guarded cell under constant surveillance. As a killer hurricane bears relentlessly down on them, a strange case takes on even darker, sinister shades - with hints of radical experimentation, horrifying surgeries, and lethal counter moves made in the cause of a covert shadow war. No one is going to escape Shutter Island unscathed, because nothing at Ashecliffe Hospital is remotely what it seems.

Very interesting story, got me out of my book funk and had me reading nonstop, but the ending was a bit of a let down I think. I figured it out halfway through, and the whole thing, looking back at it once finished, was pretty depressing. Loved the back drop of Shutter Island, very creepy and menacing. The whole story has a very, menacing and unnerving undertone. There is something holding me back from giving it 5 stars but I can't but my finger on what it is. Maybe the sadness of it, I don't know. Definitely worth the read though.

4 stars