Pages: 416
Dennis Lehane's 'Mystic River' features prominently in most thriller/mystery lists. I have read his 'Shutter Island' and loved it immensely for its psycho-thriller quotient. I read it after many days of having watched the movie based on it and yet the book went exceptionally well for me.
'Mystic River' begins with a description of the town in which the three main characters are growing up as eleven year old children. The bourgeois nature of the town is as much a part of the plot as the characters themselves. Sean lives in the upmarket area whereas Dave and Jimmy live in a slightly contrasting area of the town. One day, while the three are playing, two child molesters take Dave away in their car only to be dropped off four days later. Jimmy, the brash bold kid and Sean, the thinking one, refuse to get in the molesters' car and start living with the guilt of not having done anything to save Dave.
Twenty five years later, Sean has grown up to be a homicide detective, Jimmy is an ex-convict and Dave is a famous ex-baseball player who has outlived his fame. The main plot of the book revolves around the murder of Jimmy's daughter - Katie under mysterious circumstances. The murder takes place on a night when Dave comes home with blood on his body and confesses to his wife that he had gotten into a fight with a mugger whom he supposedly beat up with his bare hands.
Like a typical mystery, the plot involves many suspicious characters, their thoughts, back stories and hints at possible intentions to have committed the crime.
Lehane is a gifted writer who excels at keeping the reader guessing for a good 95% of the book. However, the end result is not too convincing in terms of the motive of the crime. There is a certain abruptness to the reveal. I got a sense that Lehane may have forcefully reverse-fitted several characters and a major part of the plot after coming up with the premise.
Besides the main plot, however, the most appealing part of the book is the insight into the mind of Dave Boyle who turns out to be a shell of a person even after twenty five years of the incident that he suffers as a child. Lehane has captured his hurt psyche extremely well. The most appealing and touching part is when Dave recalls the fateful day when he entered the car of his abusers. From the day of his return, he believes that, it is not just he who has undergone a terrible transformation. Everybody else in his life has changed too. There is nobody to listen to his side of the story. Instead everybody has turned into this smiling sympathizer who asks and does what Dave wants. The bit, where the grown up Dave confesses about having a part of him stuck in childhood, was also very touching.
Overall, Lehane scores high on developing deep characters. However, the minute descriptions of scenes fall short in keeping up the enthusiasm about solving the mystery.
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