Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane

[This is a reprint of a previously posted review; it is posted here for posterity]

[No spoilers]

I have to confess I've never been a huge fan of Scorsese films. I always feel he makes great movies with horrible, unfinished endings. Though, to be fair, I've only seen a scant handful of his movies. But, even knowing that I generally don't like his films, I was really kind of excited about Shutter Islands. The trailers made it seem like something entirely up my alley: mystery and mental institutions and gritty, hard-boiled lawmen, yay! Well. Then the whole Roman Polanski petition thing happened and Scorsese permanently excised himself from moviemakers I'm willing to pay money to see. But! Shutter Island! How would I ever know what had happened from these tantalizing tidbits he'd presented me with? Clearly, there was only one recourse. I had to buy the book.

I'd actually never heard of Dennis Lehane before, though after perusing his list, there were a few movies we'd seen that were based on his book, primary among them Gone Baby Gone and Mystic River. Funnily enough, I hadn't really loved either movie for the same reason I'm not fond of Scorsese's; great movies with endings that left me cold and unsatisfied. The marriage of Scorsese and Lehane made a lot more sense, but it left me a little worried about what I was going to get, reading Shutter Island.

I needn't have worried. The thing that I really loved most about Shutter Island and Lehane's writing is the fusion of the protagonist, Teddy Daniels, as a tough, hard-boiled lawman with incredibly lyrical, incisive prose. Too often, it doesn't work and with Teddy, it works phenomenally well, creating a really lush, almost oversaturated, atmosphere which I felt entirely surrounded by.

The plot itself has few surprises, but as it was more about the journey—Teddy's journey—it didn't really need surprises to work, only Lehane's smooth, persuasive storytelling. Though I expected the twist in the first third of the book, I didn't feel like the time it took to get there was wasted and I enjoyed the whole thing front to back. I devoured that book like a piece of candy and o, how sweet it was.