Mystic River, Dennis Lehane
The Book
In 1975 Boston, three boys who were friends got into a fight in the middle of the street in an upper working class neighborhood of one of the boys, Sean Devine. When a supposed cop car comes to break up the fight, the other two boys, from the lower working class neighborhood next door, give different answers to the cop about where they live. Jimmy lies and says he lives next door to Sean while Dave tells the truth. The "cop" bundles Dave up into the car and drives off. A few moments later, Sean's dad asks what happened to Dave, and quickly discovering the holes in the "cop's" story figures out Dave has been abducted. He is not expected to be found alive. But four days later, he returns home. And everybody says he's a broken boy.
This miraculous turn of events does not save the friend group. In fact, it shatters it. Sean keeps going up in the world, goes to college and lands a job as a detective with the State Troopers. Jimmy become a criminal, but once his first wife dies of cancer, he goes straight by buying one of the local corner stores. Dave Boyle grows up to be a great baseball player, but burns out after a couple of years in the minors and returns home to a menial job that barely pays the bills. He loves his wife, tolerates his dying mother-in-law and plays a lot of baseball with his only child, a son.
Then, one fateful girls night, Dave goes to a local bar to watch the game on TV and he sees Jimmy Markum's oldest child, Katie having a bender on the town. What happens next is for the cops to figure out, because Katie is brutally murdered (but not raped) and Dave has no alibi for when the girl was killed.
Sean is trying to close the case for his friend and trying to clear Dave's name. Jimmy and his rowdy brothers are champing at the bit to take matters into their own hands. And Dave's wife is terrified of the man she suspects is inside of her husband, and completely worried she's compromised because she cleaned his bloody clothes from the night at the bar.
All of that puts Sean in an impossible postion and a race against time and Jimmy's temper. Can he solve it in time?
My Thoughts
Dennis Lehane does an excellent job weaving this story together scene by scene. There is nary a wasted scene, and the prose is tight but elegant. Perhaps not as elegant as David Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars, but definitely more elegant than the average Agatha Christie. That, in and of itself, is no easy feat. Nor is it easy to use novel form to tell a single story, scene by scene, from the viewpoint of whichever character he needs to at the moment. Lehane expertly lulls the reader down blind alleys and dead ends by showing us where his characters both intimately understand and misunderstand their world. It is so well done, than any plot weaknesses that may remain, are easily overlooked.
This book, so expertly done, really ruined the movie for me. Yes, the movie is well cast, with every actor turning in a great performance. But the thrill of the story lies in the intimate understanding we get inside of each characters head. The movie did a good job of brining the story to life, but in a cold, cinematic way. This story is best told in novel form. Feel free to disagree in the comments below.
How Much My Library Card Saved Me
This book came to me from Glenview Public Library and entered their system on October 12, 2012. The binding of the book shows some signs of the glue degenerating, but the book, a "signed" first edition, seems to have very little use. The 401 page were easy to hold and the cover looks new. Not bad for an 11 year old book. The cover says a first edition cost $25.00 at the time of purchase. That is the number we will have to use, I do not know how much, if any extra, was charged to have a photocopy of the author's signature in the front of the book.
This Book $25.00
Items Reviewed This Year $273.95
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