Books

Summer, 1954.

U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels has come to Shutter Island, home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Along with his partner, Chuck Aule, he sets out to find an escaped patient, a murderess named Rachel Solando, as a hurricane bears down upon them.

But nothing at Ashecliffe Hospital is what it seems.

And neither is Teddy Daniels.

Is he there to find a missing patient? Or has he been sent to look into rumors of Ashecliffe's radical approach to psychiatry? An approach that may include drug experimentation, hideous surgical trials, and lethal countermoves in the shadow war against Soviet brainwashing...

Or is there another, more personal reason why he has come there?

As the investigation deepens, the questions only mount:

How has a barefoot woman escaped the island from a locked room?
Who is leaving clues in the form of cryptic codes?
Why is there no record of a patient committed there just one year before?
What really goes on in Ward C?
Why is an empty lighthouse surrounded by an electrified fence and armed guards?

The closer Teddy and Chuck get to the truth, the more elusive it becomes, and the more they begin to believe that they may never leave Shutter Island.

Because someone is trying to drive them insane...

Shutter Island's only inhabitants are the patients in a mental institution and the instution's employees, and Federal Marshal Teddy Daniels was sent to the island to investigate the highly unlikely disappearance of a patient. While on the island Teddy cannot tell if the puzzles he encounters are clues to solving the case or if they are all an elaborate setup to keep him from ever leaving.

For a long time I read nothing but mystery/suspense novels because it was only within their pages that...well it was only these books that could challenge me. Some authors in the genre are so good that the books become almost interactive. As the main character tries to sift through the case, I am a puppet on a string. There is nothing better than a good thriller that makes you sit up in bed and talk to yourself while you read. This was that type of book.

Dennis Lehane's Mystic River was a pretty good book, but I would not really compare the two. Shutter Island was much more intense and in my humble opinion, a much better book.

The book is short and a lightning fast read and my recommendation to you is to read it in as few sittings as possible. Lehane weaves a web of intricate and minute details and fewer sittings will hopefully allow you to enjoy seeing how each detail is important. If you have to, or even prefer to, read the book more slowly, the overall thrill of the book should not be lost on you at all. I really liked this book and I hope someone out there has some suggestions of books like it for me to read.

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