Shutter Island

In keeping with my new year's resolution, and after having my interest piqued by the commercials for the new Martin Scorsese movie, I decided to go out on a limb and purchase the novel "Shutter Island" by Dennis Lehane (who also wrote "Mystic River") on the Kindle.

It's impossible to talk about this book in its entirety without giving too much away, so let me cut right to the chase:

Buy this book.

Also since this was also my first experience with the Kindle, I'll briefly add that I was not disappointed in the slightest. I realize that I'm late to the party here, but I have to say it was a more enjoyable experience than I imagined. It's very easy on the eyes, takes up virtually no space at all in a carry-on bag, and the Thesaurus feature which allows you to instantly lookup any word on the page is fantastic. I still think Amazon needs to improve their pricing plan ($299 is a bit steep), but I digress...

The story begins immediately with two US Marshals, Teddy Daniels, a decorated war hero still reeling from the loss of his wife, and his partner Chuck Aule, heading out to Ashecliffe Island, the home of a psychiatric hospital on a remote island in New England, to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a female patient named Rachel Solando. Rachel, we are told, is a highly dangerous patient sent to the hospital after killing her 3 children only to later be found by a neighbor having dinner with all three children propped up around the table.

Very little is known about the facility other than experimental "treatments" are being performed on the patients by the hospital's overseer, Dr. Cawley. A fact that, as we soon find out, is something that Teddy Daniels intends to get to the bottom of. The only problem is that no one on the island wants to answer Teddy's questions. And once the two Marshals find a mysterious code in Rachel's cell, which ends with the question:

Who is 67?

...good luck putting the book down. The answer to that question "kept me awake, deep into the night, as I began to grasp what the author has done to my innocent mind-and he will do it to yours, too, if you let him." That's a quote from the Washington Post's Book World summing up my thoughts exactly.

All in all Shutter Island is an extremely satisfying read that I would recommend to absolutely everyone (4 out of 5 stars). Now let's just hope that Scorsese manages to do it justice on the big screen.