Mystic River CD by Dennis Lehane and David Strathairn

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Mystic River CD from Mystery & Thrillers

Mystic River CD
Available from Amazon
Price: $22.76
Updated on 6-30-2008.

Features

Audio CD: 6 pages

Publisher: HarperAudio; Abridged edition (January 30, 2001)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0694524646

ISBN-13: 978-0694524648

Product Dimensions: 5.7 x 4.9 x 1 inches

Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces ()

Amazon.com's Best of 2001
Ever since blasting onto the literary scene with the Shamus Award-winning A Drink Before the War, Dennis Lehane has been the golden boy of noir. His Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro novels are marvels of tight pacing, dialogue so good it gets under your skin and stays there, with dead-on portrayals of working-class Boston neighborhoods. Sure, he's the oft-proclaimed, hard-boiled heir to Hammett and Chandler, but Lehane also takes a page from the Hemingway school of hyper-intense writing. He pares away and pares away until he's left with the absolute essentials--and then those essentials just explode off the page. In his five Kenzie-Gennaro novels, the detective duo is at the nexus of Lehane's big bang. Darkly funny and just this side of jaded, Angie and Patrick move through Dorchester's bleak streets with an assurance born of familiarity. It's impossible to imagine these streets without the pair, or to imagine the pair away from those streets. Mystic River, then, arrives as a bit of a gamble, as Lehane moves from the sharp edges of portraiture to the broader strokes of landscape. No Angie, no Patrick: this neighborhood is on its own. It's not any prettier and certainly no friendlier, and its working-class façade still barely masks the irresistible tug of violent ways, means, and ends. Twenty-five years ago, Dave Boyle got into a car. When he came back four days later, he was different in a way that destroyed his friendship with Sean Devine and Jimmy Marcus. Now Sean's a cop, Jimmy's a store owner with a prison record and mob connections, and Dave's trying hard to keep his demons safely submerged. When Jimmy's daughter Katie is found murdered, each of the men must confront a past that none is eager to acknowledge. Lehane tugs delicately on the strands that weave this neighborhood together, testing for their strengths and weaknesses; this novel seems as much anthropological case study as thriller. By turns violent and pensive, Mystic River is vintage Lehane. How good is it? You may go in missing Angie and Patrick, but after a few pages you won't even realize they're gone. Lehane's noir is still black magic. --Kelly Flynn --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly
Lehane ventures beyond his acclaimed private eye series with this emotionally wrenching crime drama about the effects of a savage killing on a tightly knit, blue-collar Boston neighborhood. Written with a sensitivity toward character that exceeds his previous efforts, the story tracks the friendship of three boys from a defining moment in their childhood, when 11-year-old Dave Boyle was abducted off the streets of East Buckingham and sexually molested by two men before managing to escape. Boyle, Jimmy Marcus and Sean Devine grow apart as the years pass, but a quarter century later they are thrust back together when Marcus's 19-year-old daughter, Katie, is murdered in a local park. Marcus, a reformed master thief turned family man, goes through a period of intense grief, followed by a thirst for revenge. Devine, now a homicide cop assigned to the murder, tries to control his old friend while working to make sense of the baffling case, which involves turning over the past as much as it does sifting through new evidence. In time, Devine begins to suspect Boyle, a man of many ghoulish secrets who has led a double life ever since the molestation. Lehane's story slams the reader with uncomfortable images, a beautifully rendered setting and an unnerving finale. With his sixth novel, the author has replaced the graphic descriptions of crime and violence found in his Patrick Kenzie-Angela Gennaro series (Prayers for Rain; Gone, Baby, Gone) with a more pensive, inward view of life's dark corners. It's a change that garners his themesAregret over life choices, the psychological imprints of childhood, personal and professional compromiseAa richer context and his characters a deeper exploration. Agent, Ann Rittenberg. (Feb. 6) Forecast: Given the excitement in-house at Morrow that this is Lehane's breakthrough book, and the promotion they're placing behind it, it stands an excellent chance of leaping straight onto the bestseller lists. A one-day laydown, $250,000 ad-promo and an 11-city author tour, plus a blurb from Michael Connelly designating Lehane as "the heir apparent," should provide the groundwork for explosive sales. Rights have been sold in the U.K., France and Germany, and there will be a large-print edition as well as an audio from Harper Audio.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Reader Reviews
This review is from: Mystic River (Mass Market Paperback) In transparent prose that carries this page-turner from first line to last, Dennis Lehane spins a mesmerizing story about three childhood friends who grow apart because of changing economics and an incident that occurred in 1975. When a car stops as the eleven year olds brawl in the street, two men get out to break up the fight. Because of a single lie, one boy gets into the car, leaving the other two free and safe on the street. The abduction leaves scars on all three boys, and they carry their separate wounds with them into adulthood. When Jimmy's beloved teenage daughter Katie is found brutally murdered, they are unexpectedly reunited. As with all good murder mysteries, nothing is simple, and every act is suspect. Once I started reading this novel, I didn't want to put it down. The plot has terrific momentum, and the writing is tightly wound. The most refreshing element in this book is Lehane's characterizations which mark even the most admirable characters with lapses of ethics and the most despicable with redeeming traits. The complexities allow for shifting reader loyalties, thereby giving Lehane a greater range in navigating in a less-than-straight path to the truth. Lehane's theme of karma - of one act leading to another and yet another until a misdeed is repaid - is skillfully developed and provides a strong connection to seemingly unrelated events, thus making sense out of the senseless. What these boys-turned-men are capable of, and what they deserve, becomes the force behind the plot. MYSTIC RIVER is a well-written, thoughtfully evoked murder mystery that is grounded in moral ambiguities. The complexities of character and issues give a heft to this novel despite its genre's traditional emphasis of plot over everything else. Lehane's skilled but undemanding style makes this novel great weekend or vacation reading. Don't start it at bedtime unless you want to be reading late into the night. Comment | Permalink | (Report this)

Mystic River CD
List Price: $29.95
Available from Amazon
Price: $22.76
Updated on 6-30-2008.