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Mystic River

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Overview

When they were children, Sean Devine, Jimmy Marcus, and Dave Boyle were friends. But then a strange car drove up their street. One boy got in the car, two did not, and something terrible happened -- something that ended their friendship and changed all three boys forever. Twenty-five years later, Sean is a homicide detective. Jimmy is an ex-con. And Dave is trying to hold his marriage together and keep his demons at bay-demons that urge him to do horrific things.

When Jimmy's daughter is found murdered, Sean is assigned to the case. His investigation brings him into serious conflict with Jimmy. And then there is Dave, who came home covered in someone else's blood the night Jimmy's daughter died. While Sean attempts to use the law to return peace and order to the neighborhood, Jimmy finds his need for vengeance pushing him ever closer to a moral abyss from which he won't be able to return.

A tense and unnerving psychological thriller, Mystic River is also an epic novel of love, loyalty, faith, and family.

Editorial Reviews

Editorial Reviews for this product are not available at this time.

Author Information

Bio of Dennis Lehane

Four years ago, Dennis Lehane '01, was headed to a movie with friends when his editor called with fantastic news. That Sunday, Stephen King's review of "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" would appear in The New York Times Book Review. In it, King mentioned that the Potter series and "the superb detective novels of Dennis Lehane became a kind of lifeline" as he recovered from the accident that almost killed him. Dennis Lehane was born and raised in Dorchester, Massachusetts. He has written seven novels, including Gone, Baby, Gone; Shutter Island, and Mystic River, which was made into the Academy-Award winning film starring Sean Penn and directed by Clint Eastwood. His short stories include "Until Gwen," which was selected for inclusion in Best American Short Stories 2005.

Customer Reviews

  • 4 stars out of 5Follows the movie very well

    Posted March 22, 2009 by Arielle, Houston

    I saw this movie. The book follows the movie very well, with nothing much added or subtracted. There are many victims in this story, but I will leave it up to other readers to spot them.

Additional Info

Imprint

HarperCollins

Filesize

965.29 KB

Number of Pages

496

eBook ISBN

0061238406

Excerpt from: Mystic River by Dennis Lehane

The Point and the Flats

When Sean Devine and Jimmy Marcus were kids, their fathers worked together at the Coleman Candy plant and carried the stench of warm chocolate back home with them. It became a permanent character of their clothes, the beds they slept in, the vinyl backs of their car seats. Sean's kitchen smelled like a Fudgsicle, his bathroom like a Coleman Chew-Chew bar. By the time they were eleven, Sean and Jimmy had developed a hatred of sweets so total that they took their coffee black for the rest of their fives and never ate dessert.

On Saturdays, Jimmy's father would drop by the Devines' to have a beer with Sean's father. He'd bring Jimmy with him, and as one beer turned into six, plus two or three shots of Dewar's, Jimmy and Sean would play in the backyard, sometimes with Dave Boyle, a kid with girl's wrists and weak eyes who was always telling jokes he'd learned from his uncles. From the other side of the kitchen window screen, they could hear the hiss of the beer can pull-tabs, bursts of hard, sudden laughter, and the heavy snap of Zippos as Mr. Devine and Mr. Marcus lit their Luckys.

Sean's father, a foreman, had the better job. He was tall and fair and had a loose, easy smile that Sean had seen calm his mother's anger more than a few times, just shut it down like a switch had been flicked off inside of her. Jimmy's father loaded the trucks. He was small and his dark hair fell over his forehead in a tangle and something in his eyes seemed to buzz all the time. He had a way of moving too quickly; you'd blink and he was on the other side of the room. Dave Boyle didn't have a father, just a lot of uncles, and the only reason he was usually there on those Saturdays was because he had this gift for attaching himself to Jimmy like lint; he'd see him leaving his house with his father, show up beside their car, half out of breath, going "What's up, Jimmy?" " with a sad hopefulness.