My rating: ∗∗∗/5
Not the best or greatest mystery I’ve ever read though I did enjoy some of parts of it. The beginning of the book was good, but the story didn’t catch on. It was implied that somehow the three boys’ lives are intertwined but I didn’t feel that way when I read it even though Jimmy & Dave are cousin-in-laws, only until the end that it seems to have some connection. None of them seem to remember or have any feelings for what happened when they were young, of course except for Dave.
Sometimes I wonder if the mass market paperback version causes me to feel that most writings seem the same, because Dennis Lehane’s writing my mass market paperback version didn’t stand out as great literature. It was a story good enough to make into a movie for its suspense, but not something I would consider to stir any emotions. Perhaps it was also the lucid dreams and the Boy who returned from the Wolf talk and all that just seem… unmanly. I think the way Lehane tried so hard to lead people to believe Dave has dunit is backfire because the whole time reading it, I didn’t believe it one bit and knew that there must be something else.
The cops were sharp enough but not quick enough. And the whole thing with the wives and other kids was way to distracting and should have been cut out of the book. My theory is that half way through Mystic River, Lehane had the idea of writing Shutter Island (see chapter 13), then he just quickly finished up this one, thus didn’t have enough time to invest in its story toward the end, which make this book a 3-star at best imo. If you didn’t think his writing was bad, then just read this following sentence it was as if he needed a better editor as if he didn’t know where to put a comma as if using the word as if multiple times would make it a better analogy.
“For a moment, Celeste felt as if they stood naked before her, as if she were witness to something between a man and his wife that was as intimate as if she were watching them make love.”
Ugh.
