Dennis Lehane, Mystic River
Sean, Jimmy and Dave are three friends, two of them living in a poor and unsafe Boston area and one, Sean, from a wealthier neighborhood. Sean and Jimmy often look for each other’s company, but Dave is the one who tags along, his presence tolerated rather than sought for. One day, as the three of them are busy arguing on the street, a car stops and two men, pretending to be cops, insist on driving them back home: one of them, Dave, gets in the car, the two others don’t, and the incident changes their lives forever. Four days later, Dave comes back changed but refuses to talk about what happened during these four days…
Years later, Sean has become a state investigator, Jimmy, who spent time in prison, has put an end to his criminal activities for the sake of his wife and three daughters, and Dave, a very secretive man, has married Celeste and had a son named Michael. Seeing each other from time to time, they share nothing of the past friendship, except the knowledge of Dave’s abduction and the guilt it brings with it. One day though, a tragedy brings them together unexpectedly: Jimmy’s daughter Katie is found murdered, Sean is one of the policemen in charge of the investigation, and Dave is one of the last persons to have seen her alive…
Never having read anything by Denis Lehane before, I heard of Mystic River because of the movie made after it and I wanted to read the book before watching the movie. First of all, I must say that Mystic River is a particularly depressing book, not because of the occurrence of murder (if I thought that reading about fictional murder was depressing, I would have quit reading mysteries long ago), but because of the bleakness transpiring from each page, almost from each sentence, the dark, unredeeming view of the human being, the belief in his ultimate badness…
Mystic River is about human violence and ugliness, loss and getting over loss, and also about the trust or mistrust we put in others and in ourselves. As a whodunit, Mystic River surprised me, and that in itself is a good thing, since I have been complaining in previous reviews about not being surprised often enough by the identity of a culprit. Mystic River, too noir for my taste, is however a good accomplishment when it comes to the plot and the characterization, and I will probably be looking for Shutter Island soon, since I read good reviews of it…
Rating: 3,5/5
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