Review of Mystic River by Dennis Lehane

Picked this up in Voltaire and Rousseau in the West End for 70p. I’d already heard of the film directed by Clint Eastwood which starred Sean Penn and Tim Robbins. In fact, we had rented it on DVD a few years ago and not been able to watch it before time run out.

The book was well reviewed given the blurb on its inside cover and it even had a sticker stating that if you were not 100% satisfied with the read you could get your money back. I wonder how many people got in touch?

The book starts off in the ‘70s telling of three boys called Jimmy, Sean and Dave. Two of them live in the poorer area, The Flats and the third, Sean, lives in the more well to do Point. (It’s never that clear but it is all set in the suburbs of Boston.). These boys are only really friends because their fathers meet up on a Saturday afternoon to watch the ball game.

Then an incident occurs which is to affect them for the rest of their lives. Dave, is abducted by two paedophiles, right in front of Sean and Jimmy and although he does return alive to his family, four days later he is psychologically affected as we find out later.

The book then moves to the present day when all three boys are now grown men with families and the various problems that can bring.

Sean has grown up to be a policeman. He is married but separated from his wife. Through the book he gets calls from her where she doesn’t speak at all. Towards the end we find out why.

Jimmy had a life of crime in his late teens and ended up serving 2 years in prison. His wife died during that time but he still had his daughter Katie. He was now married to Annabeth, sister to the notorious Savage Brothers. He was now running a successful convenience store.

Then you have Dave. He was married to Celeste and had a son, Michael. Although he was working, it was poorly paid and they were always struggling to make ends meet. They were both worried about rising rents and being forced to move.

Soon after the exposition of the story, we get into the mea. Jimmy’s daughter, Katie, is murdered on her way home from a night out with her two pals. This was in essence a hen party, because she was about to elope to Las Vegas with her boyfriend, Brendan.

At the same time as this, Dave, is involved in an incident with a ‘mugger’ and comes home covered in blood.

Of course, you know that Sean is going to be in charge of the case.

From this point on the story is a combination of the police procedural and dealing with the issues and emotions arising from the circumstances.

The book is well paced, moving and powerful in lots of ways and in my opinion was very deserving of the good crits.

As post script, I bought the DVD for £3 this week and watched a day after reading the book.
Have to say, that it was one of the best transfer of books to the big screen that I’ve seen for a long time. Sean Penn and Tim Robbins were excellent. Another feather in the cap for Clint Eastwood who doesn’t seem to be able to make a bad movie.