Mystic River by Dennis Lehane (Epub)

Description

When they were children, Sean Devine, Jimmy Marcus, and Dave Boyle were friends. But then a strange car pulled up to their street. One boy got into the car, two did not, and something terrible happened—something that ended their friendship and changed all three boys forever.

Twenty-five years later, Sean is a homicide detective. Jimmy is an ex-con who owns a corner store. And Dave is trying to hold his marriage together and keep his demons at bay —demons that urge him to do terrible things. When Jimmy’s daughter is found murdered, Sean is assigned to the case. His investigation brings him into conflict with Jimmy, who finds his old criminal impulses tempt him to solve the crime with brutal justice. And then there is Dave, who came home the night Jimmy’s daughter died covered in someone else’s blood.

A tense and unnerving psychological thriller, Mystic River is also an epic novel of love and loyalty, faith and family, in which people irrevocably marked by the past find themselves on a collision course with the darkest truths of their own hidden selves.

User’s Reviews

Amazon.com Review Ever since blasting onto the literary scene with the Shamus Award-winning A Drink Before the War, Dennis Lehane has been the golden boy of noir. His Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro novels are marvels of tight pacing, dialogue so good it gets under your skin and stays there, with dead-on portrayals of working-class Boston neighborhoods. Sure, he’s the oft-proclaimed, hard-boiled heir to Hammett and Chandler, but Lehane also takes a page from the Hemingway school of hyper-intense writing. He pares away and pares away until he’s left with the absolute essentials–and then those essentials just explode off the page. In his five Kenzie-Gennaro novels, the detective duo is at the nexus of Lehane’s big bang. Darkly funny and just this side of jaded, Angie and Patrick move through Dorchester’s bleak streets with an assurance born of familiarity. It’s impossible to imagine these streets without the pair, or to imagine the pair away from those streets. Mystic River, then, arrives as a bit of a gamble, as Lehane moves from the sharp edges of portraiture to the broader strokes of landscape. No Angie, no Patrick: this neighborhood is on its own. It’s not any prettier and certainly no friendlier, and its working-class façade still barely masks the irresistible tug of violent ways, means, and ends. Twenty-five years ago, Dave Boyle got into a car. When he came back four days later, he was different in a way that destroyed his friendship with Sean Devine and Jimmy Marcus. Now Sean’s a cop, Jimmy’s a store owner with a prison record and mob connections, and Dave’s trying hard to keep his demons safely submerged. When Jimmy’s daughter Katie is found murdered, each of the men must confront a past that none is eager to acknowledge. Lehane tugs delicately on the strands that weave this neighborhood together, testing for their strengths and weaknesses; this novel seems as much anthropological case study as thriller. By turns violent and pensive, Mystic River is vintage Lehane. How good is it? You may go in missing Angie and Patrick, but after a few pages you won’t even realize they’re gone. Lehane’s noir is still black magic. –Kelly Flynn –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Reviews from Amazon users, collected at the time the book is getting published on UniedVRG. It can be related to shiping or paper quality instead of the book content:

⭐ I saw the movie that Clint Eastwood interpreted but after 15 years, I barely remembered the story. This was one of the most compelling books I’ve ever read. Not just the story but the writing. One of the few books in my life that I had trouble putting down. I found myself waking up in the middle of the night to read it. It was the first Dennis Lehane I’ve read and I found his prose to be romantic, dark, poetic, gritty, and touching. He let his characters breathe and painted broad emotions, from venomous violence to silent tenderness, with equal artistry. I can’t wait to read my next Lehane book.

⭐ I don’t quite get why this book is as beloved as it is…I thought it was a very well-written and dense narrative but I found the characters two-dimensional and the story drawn out to a conclusion that felt rather anti-climactic. There was something very simplistic about the story which I think some readers appreciate but I was just expecting something more.I appreciate the skill the author takes in constructing the scenario that he built, I just didn’t connect with the narrative as much as I hoped I would.

⭐ Mystic River is my first Dennis Lehane book. After the first paragraph, I knew I had a winner. This tale opens with three Boston kids, Sean , Jimmy, and Dave, playing hockey in the street. Something happens to one of the boys that day that changes the trajectory of their friendship and lives.25 years later, Jimmy, now an ex-con, loses his daughter to a vicious murder. Sean is working the homicide, and Dave fits into the narrative.Lots of plot twists, suspense, and good old fashioned storytelling.I rented the movie after completing the book, it was just as good !

⭐ I really enjoyed Shutter’s Island, so I figured Mystic River would be equally enjoyable. Nope. After 35% I began just began skimming through this book. Not much meat to the story; mostly the characters recalling their past. I was bored to tears. This was taking character development beyond the point of interest to the waters of ho hum who cares.

⭐ A well told story, in which you kind of actually like the characters, even though most of them are bad guys. One of the biggest thugs in the story has a pet cat that his nieces love to play with, and the ex con is a good family man and really cares about his neighbors. But the guy who got wrongfully killed was getting ready to become a really bad guy and you don’t really care too much about him getting offed. All 3 of the main characters’ wives are disturbing in different ways, as well. The cop is a pretty awesome guy, though. All in all a really exciting, well told story that messed with my sympathies a little bit but that is ok. Recommend it to anyone, it’s just as great as the movie.

⭐ Cataloguing Dennis Lehane as a “mystery writer” is, to me, sort of like classifying LeBron James as just a basketball player. Yes, Lehane writes books that have a mystery/thriller component to them, but, just as James’s ability now defines the game of basketball, Lehane’s ability goes far beyond a genre also. I would challenge all readers to undertake any of today’s top names in the field (Patterson, Baldacci, Grisham…) and read their top works side by side with Lehane’s and I’d wager that a marked literary difference would be not only immediately noticeable, but profound. The intriguing difference with Lehane, it seems to me, is that he encompasses the whole human experience with his novels. The characters have voice, depth and a priority in his works that the others in this genre clearly lack. And once he’s firmly established these characters, the story then flows easily and with a believability uncommon in those others.”Mystic River”, although a little dated now (2001), is a classic example of this. Bypassing the well established pattern of other mystery/thriller works, Lehane, instead of immediately grabbing the reader with his storyline, slowly but efficiently introduces us to the people and environment. Centering essentially around three main characters, Sean Devine, Jimmy Marcus and Dave Boyle, we watch as our protagonists are developed before the first major “event” of the story ever ensues. Following them into adulthood, Lehane is brilliant with introducing and developing subordinate characters.As kids, Dave, essentially the “weakest” of the three, is lured into what they all think is a police car when they are all out arguing in the street in their suburban Boston neighborhood. The car isn’t a police car, of course, and Dave is actually abducted by pedophiles and suffers four days of brutality before escaping. Fast forwarding to the present day, all of them are adults with wives and families and we’re witness now to a violent crime where Jimmy’s daughter is brutally murdered. Sean, a State Trooper, is brought in to help solve the crime and the story is carried forward here in a nuanced three-pronged attack…Jimmy, not surprisingly an ex-con now, slowly builds a revenge response as his grief grows; Sean’s duty is overlayed with his past while Dave’s demons surface as he still battles the effects of that terrible four days.What truly makes this novel stand out, however, is Lehane’s ability to have the characters grow while the plot unfolds. Brilliant dialogue, believable outcomes, all cast in an environment of low-middle class Boston is a clear tone and backdrop throughout this work. Never is there any scene or conversation that deviates from this firmly established basis and Lehane carries all of these subplots to an almost obvious conclusion.Again, having this work characterized as a “mystery/thriller” is only touching the surface. Dennis Lehane provides the reader with a true moral drama here and this book branches out into so many other literary fields that are masterfully grasped that it really should be undertaken by anyone who enjoys great writing. Please, do not judge this on category alone…this is a consummate literary experience and should be enjoyed by all. Highest recommendation.

⭐ I had read this book first, about ten years ago. Then I saw the film. As my reviews of both bear out, I thought they were remarkable and powerful. Then, this past spring, I was asked to teach a course on film adaptations from novels. This book, naturally, appeared on my syllabus. So, I had to reread it. I was, once again, taken in by Dennis Lehane’s writing. I always am.My class was quick to point out an unexplained problem with the solution to the crime. I won’t mention it here, obviously, because it would spoil things. Anyway, the “problem” only occurred in hindsight: after we had discussed the book extensively. It occurred to me only after the rereading. In any event, I won’t go into the details of the story or the characters. Those strengths have been mentioned by others here. I just want to make some comments on other reviewers–not Amazon reviewers, but professional book critics.The book has been called anti-youth. It isn’t, although the young people do exhibit some not very admirable characteristics. I read a review that said the book has racist elements. It doesn’t: some characters do, but not the book. The book has been termed sexist. I don’t know why; the men are portrayed as negatively as some of the women. The book has been called misanthropic.Hmm.Maybe the novel is not “misanthropic” in the classic definition. But Lehane certainly has difficulties finding anything redeemable in most human beings. His theorem about life, as I paraphrase a major character, Sean Devine, is that we are all born self-centered children, who become child-adults, who die after we have raised more child-adults. And then “The dead stay dead,” he says. But the damage they did to–or was done to them by–other humans and by life, both linger but, then, are forgotten. Dave expresses his feelings of being alone, alien, forgotten.This is a bleak enough view of life, enough to make you wish you were never born. And yet, Lehane makes you read on. The story pulls you along, but so does the painful beauty of the writing. When you put the book down, when you are done, I think you will exhale deeply, almost as if you had been punched in the gut with a very sad truth. When was the last time a book did that to you?

⭐ Totally did not like this book. First chapter was full of awful bad language. I will never buy any of his books again!

⭐ This book was awesome. I knew one character didn’t do it but I didn’t see the other part coming at all. Great read. I got turned on to Dennis Lehane after I saw the movie Shutter Island. I was intrigued by the plot and knew I needed to read his books. Can’t wait to read Shutter Island and many more of his Thrillers

⭐ It only got 4 instead of 5 stars because 1. sometimes his long drawn out descriptions made me forget what the action was before that, and 2. I would have preferred a chapter when switching from one character and his scene and the next character in his scene. His descriptions were great. It was a good mystery. This is my first read of this author. I will read more of his books and recommend to others.

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