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Studying to be a writer is not, by itself, sufficient to make a writer. There is a necessary contribution from that little thing called life experience without which writing, no matter how good, will fail to come to life. Fortunately for crime fiction, Dennis Lehane has worked many jobs, including counselling work with the mentally handicapped and worked, too, with physically and sexually abused children -- depressing and distressing work for anyone, but employment which would surely give a writer background on which to draw in turning out fiction. Lehane won a Shamus in 1994 for his first novel A DRINK BEFORE THE WAR . His series characters, Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro, gained him an appreciative readership in his subsequent four novels, but true success and literary fame, arguably, did not arrive for him until he penned MYSTIC RIVER, the book which was subsequently made into an enormously popular film. SHUTTER ISLAND leaves Patrick and Angie in their limbo -- and this reviewer can't see any of the characters in Lehane's latest novel being co-opted into further adventures -- in favour of US Marshall Teddy Daniels. There is an intriguing and mystifying prologue narrated in the first person by Dr Lester Sheehan, he whom Teddy does not meet officially until the closing pages of the novel. Teddy is identified as the son of a fisherman but a boy who was unable to cope with the immensity of the sea and who, therefore, never followed in his father's professional footsteps. Instead, Teddy entered law enforcement and, in the late fifties, was on a mysterious quest on Shutter Island, accompanied by fellow Marshall, Chuck Aule, a man with whom he has never previously worked. Teddy is a survivor of disasters -- his wife, Dolores, died in a fire set by one Andrew Laeddis. Laeddis was sent to Ashecliffe Hospital, an institution for the criminally insane on Shutter Island. A patient, Rachel Solando, has escaped from the confines of the hospital and is at large on the island. Teddy and Chuck are to find her and return her to captivity. They must guard against her catching the ferry back to the mainland in Massachusetts. They become deeply suspicious of the people they meet on the island and feel there are things they are not being told. They have had to surrender their weapons, despite their official status, and an approaching hurricane looks like hindering their investigation -- although, paradoxically, it eventually helps them. Rachel has apparently left coded messages for them and Teddy, who has worked in Intelligence during his army days, is able to break the code. The two officers are unable to meet the warden of the facility nor to obtain information on the mysterious Dr Sheehan but must, instead, confine themselves to meeting psychiatrist Dr Cawley, he of the paradoxically compassionate eyes. Teddy feels there is an ill-omened conspiracy bent on preventing him and his partner from discovering the truth about the hospital and the island itself. Teddy himself, however, has his own secrets and reasons for coming to the island. The writing of the tragic tale is impressive. As before mentioned, Lehane, the master of deception, steers the reader away from the true solution until the rather shocking ending. Some of the scenes Lehane has written could well belong in a book deemed horror fiction -- one that especially springs to mind is that with the rats. Readers may mourn the absence of Lehane's series characters but to my mind he may have even outdone his success with MYSTIC RIVER with this particularly powerful novel.
Reviewed by Denise Wels Pickles, February 2004
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