Shutter Island is a very well placed suspense novel. The tone, atmosphere and characters created by Lehane bristle with a familiarity which immediately causes the spine to tingle and the mind to wander. Made into a well driven film by Martin Scorsese, which is almost to the letter recreated from the novel, it moves with good pacing and is a rapid read. It is highly suggested though, that the book be read before watching the film. As good as the novel is it is slightly out of place among Lehane’s catalogue.
A young man fresh from the horrors of the Western Theater of WWII and the liberation of the concentration camps is haunted by the death of his wife and children. In place of that vacuum he turns to diligence and the importance of his job as he investigates a missing person on a island housing the criminally insane. All is not as it seems or as it the young Federal Marshall would have it be. As he questions the methods of the facility and a possible link to Hitleresque methods of treatment he finds they may be directly linked to his own sanity. ( )

I feel bad writing this- but I found the book to be meh.

I read it because my friend recommended it to me. She loved it. Yet for me, it just kind of left me feeling empty and a little sad. Maybe the twist could have been better? I wonder if this was an instance of the movie being better than the book. ( )

VERY MILD SPOILERS CONTAINED INSIDE (you'll have read the same in the book's blurbs, anyway):

I love a good page-turner every now and then, and this novel -- locked-room mystery, ghost story, haunted-house flick, cop thriller, in various amounts -- definitely didn't disappoint. (Especially when you're on a plane.) But the success of the story is wholly dependent on some sleight-of-hand on Lehane's part -- nothing wrong with this, really, except that skillful construction doesn't quite conceal the fact that Shutter Island is missing what Lehane does best. In [b:Mystic River|21671|Mystic River|Dennis Lehane|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/512vgYKeKFL._SL75_.jpg|1234249], with its Shakespearean dramatic arc, or almost any of the Kenzie/Gennaro books (except maybe for the weak [b:Sacred|425124|Sacred (Kenzie & Gennaro, #3)|Dennis Lehane|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174627469s/425124.jpg|1352373]), one had the sense that Boston and its people were living, breathing, essential characters in the story. (Other than the performances, this rootedness in place is what made Clint Eastwood's Mystic River, and Ben Affleck's vastly underrated 2007 directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone, so powerful.)

Would it be remiss to say that Dennis Lehane's Boston is, albeit in a more limited fashion, as fleshed out as David Simon's Baltimore? (Or Richard Price's "Dempsey"?) It's that sense of vibrant reality that's missing from Shutter Island, the idea that a city and its residents had lived there long before our characters step on the stage. ( )

Excellent, excellent book. The writing is great, the story's tight and fast-paced. I inhaled this one in a couple of days. ( )

I saw the movie when it first came out in 2010, and I remember loving it and being blown away by the twist. Twelve years have passed since then, and while my memory was fuzzy on the details, I knew what to expect from the book. And yet, despite anticipating the big reveal, I was just as awe-struck and surprised as I had been while I watched the film.

At times, Lehane's writing is so fast-paced to be nearly breathlessly frantic. Add to that a dose of noir style, and I was turning pages quicker and quicker as I neared the ending. I flew through the last hundred pages in record time because I HAD to know how everything would wrap up. I'm a devoted Lehane fan, and I can't wait to see what he has in store for us next. ( )