Shut­ter Island by Den­nis Lehane is a psy­cho­log­i­cal thriller that was pub­lished way back in 2003. I bought it when it first came out but remem­bered that I  just couldn’t get into it. I chal­lenged myself to fin­ish read­ing it this year and mis­sion completed.

I was under the mis­guided impres­sion that Lehane couldn’t pos­si­bly write any­thing of inter­est for me out­side of his “Patrick/Angie books. Well, I was wrong. Shut­ter Island is a page-turner. A novel that plumbs the depths of the human psy­che.  A meaty psy­cho­log­i­cal thriller that plays with the mind with a cli­matic end­ing that was both shock­ing and quite disturbing. Yep, my kind of novel.

The course of events in this story takes place in the early 1950’s. Two Fed­eral agents, Teddy Daniels and Chuck Aule are on the ferry head­ing towards Ashe­cliffe, a prison slash med­ical facil­ity for the crim­i­nally insane located on Shut­ter Island.  Their assign­ment is to locate a miss­ing patient who is nowhere to be found on an island that is com­pletely sur­rounded by water and rock. That miss­ing patient is Rachel Solando, a war widow with a his­tory of vio­lence, who drowned her three chil­dren two years ago and who has van­ished from her locked room with­out a trace.

The inves­ti­ga­tion into Rachel’s dis­ap­pear­ance lasts four days and then the story is decid­edly over. Through­out the course of the inves­ti­ga­tion the author has set the reader up and I will not elab­o­rate on how he did this. The mood and atmos­phere of the story were down­right creepy and deli­ciously sin­is­ter. The thought of “mad sci­en­tists” prac­tic­ing their rad­i­cal ther­a­pies on unsus­pect­ing patients is a bit scary. Sec­ond, there’s a major hur­ri­cane head­ing towards the island. Teddy and Chuck find them­selves stuck on the island with no way to com­mu­ni­cate off the island while con­duct­ing their inves­ti­ga­tion. It is then that Lehane amps up the sus­pense and I couldn’t stop reading.

It’s been awhile since I’ve read a really good psy­cho­log­i­cal thriller that plays with your head. It was such a quick read, too, that I had to go back to reread the story again, armed with the insight I gained from the end­ing. Lehane hit this one out of the ball park for me. Shut­ter Island was such a grip­ping and star­tling read that I just couldn’t put it down. It’s one of those nov­els that when you reach the end you have to dis­cuss it with some­body. Thank­fully, my mother had already read this book albeit a long time ago but she remem­bered the ending!

Shut­ter Island is a story that one doesn’t soon for­get after the last page is turned. The novel really doesn’t get going until after the sec­ond or third chap­ter. The pro­logue effec­tively projects a sin­is­ter feel­ing from the start by rais­ing an aware­ness that some­thing bad has hap­pened to one of these char­ac­ters.  You just don’t know who or what or how. Lehane, for­give me. How could I have ever doubted you? My grade, A. Would I reread this book again? You bet I would. This is a book that sparks dis­cus­sion with other read­ers once it’s fin­ished. If you haven’t read it yet — you should. You won’t be dis­ap­pointed and if you are, I really don’t want to hear about it.

This book is still avail­able in paper­back and hard­cover, audio CD, cas­settes and ebook, too.

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