There are threads in our lives. You pull one, and everything else gets affected. When they were children, Sean Devine, Jimmy Marcus and Dave Boyle were friends. But then a strange car pulled up their street. One boy got in the car, two did not, and something terrible happened - something that ended their friendship and changed all three boys for ever. Twenty-five years later, Sean Devine is a homicide detective. Jimmy Marcus is an ex-con who owns a corner store. And Dave Boyle is trying to hold his marriage together and keep his demons at bay - demons that urge him to do horrific things. When Jimmy Marcus's daughter is found murdered, Sean Devine is assigned the case. His personal life unravelling, he must go back into a world he thought he'd left behind to confront not only the violence of the present but the nightmares of his past. His investigation brings him into conflict with Jimmy Marcus, who finds his old criminal impulses tempt him to solve crime with brutal justice. And then there is Dave Boyle, who came home the night Jimmy's daughter died covered in someone else's blood. While Sean Devine attempts to use the law to return peace and order to the neighbourhood, Jimmy Marcus finds his need for vengeance pushing him ever closer to a moral abyss from which he won't be able to return, and Dave's wife, Celeste, sleeps at night with a man she fears may very well be a monster, a monster who fathered her child and hides his true nature from everyone, possibly even himself. At once 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.
Mystic River
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Amazon Review
Dennis Lehane's Mystic River takes the material of the ordinary police procedural thriller and shapes it into heart-break. As boys, Jimmy, Dave and Sean were friends, until one day Dave was abducted by two men pretending to be cops, and was never quite the same again. As men, Dave is a damaged fantasist, safe in a quietly happy marriage; Jimmy a retired criminal making a good respectable living for the sake of his children; and Sean is the homicide cop who finds himself investigating the murder of Jimmy's eldest daughter Katie. This is not just a book about what becomes of the children who grow into adults; it is about what happens to a neighbourhood when the rules change, when an old established working-class district acquires gentrified espresso bars at one end and the beats of the city's most dangerous whores at the other. It is also a book about the tragedy of all sudden violent deaths; we never forget our sense of Katie as she was, dancing on the last night of her life--she is never just the corpse here, never just the object of mourning and investigation. --Roz Kaveney
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
'Dennis Lehane establishes himself as one of the greats of crime-writing with MYSTIC RIVER' -- Guardian (Maxim Jakubowski)
'Enormously impressive: page-turning but thoughtful; moving in its sad inevitability… One of the finest novels I've read in ages' -- Observer (Peter Guttridge)
'Get Dennis Lehane's MYSTIC RIVER. Boy, does he know how to write' -- Elmore Leonard
'Heart-scorching…penetrating…a powerhouse of a novel' -- New York Times Book Review
'Lehane's best book by far. Like all his writing, it shimmers with great dialogue and a complex view of the world' -- Newsweek
'Enormously impressive: page-turning but thoughtful; moving in its sad inevitability… One of the finest novels I've read in ages' -- Observer (Peter Guttridge)
'Get Dennis Lehane's MYSTIC RIVER. Boy, does he know how to write' -- Elmore Leonard
'Heart-scorching…penetrating…a powerhouse of a novel' -- New York Times Book Review
'Lehane's best book by far. Like all his writing, it shimmers with great dialogue and a complex view of the world' -- Newsweek
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Hardcover
A friend passed me 'Sacred' to read on holiday - and I had it finished by the time I'd hit the beach. When I got back I ordered the rest of Lehanes books and greedily devoured them - great characters, clever dialogue and super storylines. 'Mystic River' represents a big change in Lehanes writing style - gone are McKenzie and Gennaro, and with them goes the tongue-in-cheek wisecracks that epitomised their series. Instead we have a darker, more mature story....a tale of three long-gone schoolfriends linked by the horrific murder of one of their daughters. Old coals get raked over and secrets uncovered - and although you never feel yourself intimately enjoying the company of any of the main three characters, they are painted in good detail, and you find yourself truly compelled to find out the motivations behind all three men. All in all, a good tale that leaves you guessing till the end - heavier than Lehanes previous work, but definitely well worth reading.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Pure & simple - the best book I've read in years!
Gripping tale, brilliantly told & involving characters you care about. If you don't buy another book this year, get this one.
Gripping tale, brilliantly told & involving characters you care about. If you don't buy another book this year, get this one.
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Dennis Lehane is a master at creating mood. With "Mystic River" he paints a portrait of a bleak working class neighborhood, Boston's East Buckingham Flats, and its inhabitants, who are doomed to spend generations stuck in the dark, brooding environment, just a breath away from exploding into violence. I used to think of Dennis Lehane as an excellent writer of mysteries. After reading "Mystic River," I consider him to be one of America's great new literary novelists. His characters are real, rich and complex; his dialogue is as true as the characters who speak it. The narrative is spare and elegant. And the plot is edge-of-your-seat suspenseful, always developing a new twist.
The book opens with three angry eleven year-old boys, Jimmy Marcus, Sean Devine and David Boyle, pushing each other around on one of the neighborhood streets. A car pulls up and two, (apparently) plain clothes cops aggressively order David into their car. Terrified, David admits he doesn't live on that street. One man says they're going to drive Dave home and tell his Mom he's been fighting. Then the three drive away, leaving the other two boys with sick feelings in their guts. These feelings of fear, and something gone terribly awry, will remain with them all their lives. The two men were not cops. And Dave never reaches his mother that day, nor for many days afterward. This incident will link the lives, and the destinies, of these three boys forever.
Twenty-five years have passed, and the boys are men now, living in the same neighborhood, not far from where they spent their childhood. The events of a seemingly innocent Saturday night on the town, turn violent. Murder most vicious is the outcome, and it brings all three, inextricably, back together.
This tale of friendship, family, loyalty and revenge is just plain brilliant in its intensity. The unsettled feelings the novel evoked in me, stayed with me for days after I completed it. This is one of the best, well-crafted novels I have read in a very long time. Kudos to Dennis Lehane!
JANA
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
One that you can't stop thinking about afterwards
A really good, thought provoking read, set in small town America. Refreshing
opposite to the usual Hollywood glitz scene. Will read more from this author.
opposite to the usual Hollywood glitz scene. Will read more from this author.
Published 1 month ago by CHew
5.0 out of 5 stars
A masterpiece of superb thriller writing
this book is the best Dennis Lehane I have ever read, the characters are real, they have depth, the reader feels their emotions. Read more
Published 2 months ago by patsydors
5.0 out of 5 stars
good read
I had seen the film and enjoyed it, I wanted to get the original story and was not deceived!
Good story well lwriten. Read more
Good story well lwriten. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Pical
5.0 out of 5 stars
Mystic River
I Enjoy this Author - good read, nothing else to say about this book apart from received in good time period
Published 3 months ago by Elizabeth Bray
4.0 out of 5 stars
Shutter Island is still my LeHane favourite
The problem is, I always benchmark Lehane's books against Shutter Island. Mystic River does not quite measure up. It is entertaining but not enthralling. Read more
Published 3 months ago by puddleglum
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good enough read but won't set the world on fire.
This book started really well and I was keen for it's development, however, it wasn't anything special. A good enough read, but sort of failed being very good.
Published 3 months ago by Joyce
5.0 out of 5 stars
An incredible experience
This thriller is amazingly different from almost everything I've previously read. It's deeply atmospheric and a revelation for people llke me who thought of Boston as a quaint... Read more
Published 4 months ago by bekin
5.0 out of 5 stars
looks like a good read
This is a gift for my grandad. He read Shutter island and really enjoyed it so I searched that and looked at the "other buyers also purchased" and found this. Read more
Published 5 months ago by HDenham
5.0 out of 5 stars
Deliver us from evil
Dave, Sean and Jimmy are childhood friends. But their friendship, and for Dave his childhood, ends when Dave is abducted from the street outside Sean's house by two pedophiles... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Aidan J. McQuade
5.0 out of 5 stars
Superb Book & Author
I discovered this book in a second hand shop while on holiday in California and picked it up on the off-chance. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Richard Wiltshire
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