|
[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
It's 1954 and U.S. Marshals Teddy Daniels and Chuck Aule are heading for Shutter Island, home of a hospital for the criminally insane. Rachel Solando, one of the patients, has disappeared. But how? The facility is locked down as tightly as one would expect at a facility housing very dangerous criminals and there's no way off the island. Teddy and Chuck have never worked together before, but they quickly develop an affinity for one another and an ability to perform as a near-perfect team. And they need that alliance if they are ever to break through the figurative (and, in some cases, literal) walls that are in their way. Everyone on Shutter Island seems to have something to hide. The staff are unwilling to cooperate and the patients are incapable of providing any real assistance. Teddy's and Chuck's assignment is made all the more difficult when a hurricane hits the island. They now feel as much imprisoned as any of the patients . . . and there's still no sign of the missing Rachel. It seems that there is more wrong at Shutter Island than the disappearance of a patient, but will Teddy and Chuck live to find out what that is? SHUTTER ISLAND, Lehane's first book since the critically acclaimed MYSTIC RIVER, is very different in tone from his previous work, but easily lives up to his best in quality. Teddy, still mourning the death of his young wife in a fire, and Chuck, who had to relocate from Seattle because of harassment over his Japanese-American girlfriend, are very sympathetic protagonists -- both are wounded and yet soldier on. From the hospital's staff to its patients, including the missing Rachel Solando, each of the secondary characters is fully drawn and complex. The beautiful writing and the well-developed characters alone would be enough to make SHUTTER ISLAND memorable, but Lehane doesn't stop there. The twists and turns of SHUTTER ISLAND's plot are truly dazzling; "roller coaster" doesn't begin to describe it. SHUTTER ISLAND is a powerful novel, one that stays with a reader long after the last page has been read.
Reviewed by Susan Anderson, June 2003
This book has more than one review. Click here to show all.
[ Top ]
QUICK SEARCH:
Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]
| 
