Shutter Island
A Novel
-
-
4.2 • 59 Ratings
-
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
This New York Times bestseller is an arresting psychological thriller in which two U.S. Marshals hunting for an escaped mental patient unveil a nightmare world of CIA drug trials, Nazi inspired eugenic work, and repressive mind control.
In the year 1954, U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels and his new partner, Chuck Aule, come to Shutter Island, home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane, to investigate an unexplained disappearance. Multiple murderess Rachel Solando is loose somewhere on this barren island, having vanished from a locked, guarded cell in an impossible locked room mystery. As a killer hurricane bears relentlessly down on the island, hints of radical experimentation and covert government machinations add darker, more sinister shades to an already bizarre case. Because in this hospital steeped in gothic atmosphere, nothing at Ashecliffe Hospital is remotely what it seems…
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
I came from a massive family. My father was one of 18 kids, so we had uncles and aunts everywhere—and they all had twisted senses of humour, which I’m very glad I got from my family. Once, my uncle took me and my brother to this island off the coast of Boston where there had been a mental institution, and then he told us all these ghost stories, essentially that, to this day, the ghosts of the escaped mental patients lurk in these woods. And then he vanished, just to f**k with us. That stuck with me and moved around in my head and became Shutter Island.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Know this: Lehane's new novel, his first since the highly praised and bestselling Mystic River, carries an ending so shocking yet so faithful to what has come before, that it will go down as one of the most aesthetically right resolutions ever written. But as anyone who has read him knows, Lehane, despite his mastery of the mechanics of suspense, is about much more than twists; here, he's in pursuit of the nature of self-knowledge and self-deception, and the ways in which both can be warped by violence and evil. In summer 1954, two U.S. marshals, protagonist Teddy Daniels and his new partner, Chuck Aule, arrive on Shutter Island, not far from Boston, to investigate the disappearance of patient Rachel Solando from the prison/hospital for the criminally insane that dominates the island. The marshals' digging gets them nowhere fast as they learn of Rachel's apparently miraculous escape past locked doors and myriad guards, and as they encounter roadblocks and lies strewn across their path most notably by the hospital's chief physician, the enigmatic J. Cawley and pick up hints of illegal brain surgery performed at the hospital. Then, as a major hurricane bears down on the island, inciting a riot among the insane and cutting off all access to the mainland, they begin to fear for their lives. All of the characters particularly Teddy, haunted by the tragic death of his wife are wonderful creations, but no more wonderful than the spot-on dialogue with which Lehane brings them to life and the marvelous prose that enriches the narrative. There are mysteries within mysteries in this novel, some as obvious as the numerical codes that the missing patient leaves behind and which Teddy, a code breaker in WWII, must solve; some as deep as the most profound fears of the human heart. There is no mystery, however, about how good this book is; like Mystic River, it's a tour de force. Major ad/promo; 20-city author tour; simultaneous Harper Audio and Harper Large Print edition. (One-day laydown Apr. 15)FYI:Dennis Lehane is the subject of the next installment ofPW's Innovators Series .
Customer Reviews
Waste of time
Waste of time and $.