Ratings46
Average rating4.1
This New York Times bestseller from Dennis Lehane is a gripping, unnerving psychological thriller about the effects of a savage killing on three former friends in a tightly knit, blue-collar Boston neighborhood. 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.
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brilliant book, fine writing, solid plot matched by an equally superb film
What a heavy book. Heavy in so many ways. For once it felt pretty long. Especially the first half. Don't get me wrong, I've read and enjoyed longer books, but with this I felt like I've read so much, when in hindsight not very much happened story wise. But what happens is character development. And it's so good in it's own dirty way. Which brings me to the second heaviness: the setting. My god is this setting dark and depressing. There is not one(!) main or side character with a happy background. Nobody's experiencing something good for them. It's just a endless down spiral right to the end. And it fits perfectly. There should be nothing happy in all those topics.
The book keeps you on the edge and guessing. And the ending is so perfectly written, that I totally forgot the slower pace in the first half.
Former childhood friends
brought back together by death
though, no one likes Dave.