Mystic River

· Harper Collins
4.3
89 reviews
Ebook
608
Pages

About this ebook

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.

Ratings and reviews

4.3
89 reviews
Will
February 28, 2014
The book was fine, not my favorite. Very good prose though, Lehane is a very talented writer for sure. My issue is with the search feature. For certain parts of the book I will type a word or phrase that I know is in there (I can find it manually) and it will come up with no results. It's not like the book was scanned directly into a PDF, it's clearly been transcribed so it looks like a software issue. I'm trying to write a report on the book, and I thought spending the 6 bucks to instantly find the passages and quotes I was looking for would be worth it, turned out to be a waste. So this isn't a review of the book as much as a complaint about the weak search system, designed by the NUMBER ONE SEARCH ENGINE IN THE WORLD. Disappointed.
A Google user
February 6, 2008
I do not enjoy reading as much as others because books tend to not keep my attention. But as soon as I picked this book up it caught my attention. The ending was unpredictable and amazing too! It has good action and it keeps you thinking.
A Google user
March 29, 2009
Three young boys from the mean streets of Boston lives are forever altered when one of them is abducted. Jimmy Marcus and Sean Devine did not get in the car with the two men who turned onto their street one day, but Dave Boyle did. Although Dave manages to escape from the pedophiles the friendship is never the same and all three men move on with their lives. Sean is now a police officer, Jimmy a reformed mobster who spends a few years in jail and changes when his wife dies while he is away, leaving him to raise their daughter Katie. Dave is married but hasn?t done much with his life, still harboring the pain of his past. All three of these men?s lives come together again when a teenaged Katie is murdered; Sean is the lead investigator, Jimmy is wracked by grief and guilt, and Dave becomes increasingly unraveled as many of his secrets become exposed. Powerfully written with unforgettable and complex characters, this is one of the best suspense books I have read in a very long time. Each character seems so real they almost come off the page. You empathize with them; shake your head at their weaknesses but care about each one. The language is real, the situations are real and the question of morals and ethics is explored time and again. Good people do bad things; sometimes bad people can do good things, and there is a strong sense of karma throughout the book. The ?what if? questions of making a different turn on a given day and the consequences are explored and the scars that are left on three boys as they mature into men is examined in their day by day reactions to Katie?s death. I have never read Lehane before, but I plan to remedy that situation. I have A Drink Before the War on my TBR and I will definitely read that one very soon.

About the author

Dennis Lehane is the author of thirteen novels—including the New York Times bestsellers Live by Night; Moonlight Mile; Gone, Baby, Gone; Mystic River; Shutter Island; and The Given Day—as well as Coronado, a collection of short stories and a play. He grew up in Boston, MA and now lives in California with his family.

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