Shutter Island

The basis for the blockbuster motion picture directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Shutter Island by New York Times bestselling author Dennis Lehane is a gripping and atmospheric psychological thriller where nothing is quite what it seems. The New York Times calls Shutter Island, “Startlingly original.” The Washington Post raves, “Brilliantly conceived and executed.” A masterwork of suspense and surprise from the author of Mystic River and Gone, Baby, Gone, Shutter Island carries the reader into a nightmare world of madness, mind control, and CIA Cold War paranoia andis unlike anything you’ve ever read before.

From Booklist

Lehane is red hot--his Mystic River (2001) is currently being filmed by Clint Eastwood--and he returns with another blistering page-turner. It's 1954, and U.S. Marshals Teddy Daniels and Chuck Aule arrive at a small island in Massachusetts' Outer Harbor. It is home to Ashcliffe Hospital, a federal institution for the criminally insane, and one of the patients has escaped. Although the two men are new partners, they have already developed a wry, jocular relationship while also swapping personal, painful details. Daniels' lost his much-loved wife two years prior in a fire, while Aule requested a transfer out of Seattle after being harassed over his personal relationship with a Japanese American woman. After interviewing the hospital's medical personnel, both men have the feeling they are being stonewalled, especially by the director, who seems to alternate between a cold authoritarianism and a sudden and sweeping compassion. When the island is hit by gale-force winds and Aule disappears, Daniels must go it alone, beset by the fear that he has been fed psychotropic drugs and the belief that the hospital is performing radical brain surgery as part of a secret-ops program. Lehane throws in one mind-bending plot twist after another in a psychological thriller that will leave readers in suspense right up to the end. A master of the adroit psychological detail, Lehane makes the horrors of the mean streets pale in comparison to the workings of the human mind. Joanne WilkinsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the audio_download edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Repackaged as a tie-in to the forthcoming movie, this audio version of Lehane's 2003 chilling novel features two U.S. marshals who arrive at an island off the coast of Massachusetts that's being used as a federal hospital for the criminally insane. Their job: investigate the disappearance of a multiple murderess from a locked room. Tom Stechschulte's rendition of the endlessly shifting story line is a tour de force. He begins by capturing the easygoing male bonding of the two lawmen and slowly adds a harder edge to the narration as they meet the odd people in charge of the facility and encounter an assortment of increasingly disturbing events. Even if listeners may be disappointed with Lehane's somewhat predictable conclusion, Stechschulte's delivery—shot through with pain and rage—ensures that they will not forget it. A Morrow hardcover. (Sept.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the audio_download edition.

From the Back Cover

In the year 1954, U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels and his new partner, Chuck Aule, come to Shutter Island, home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane, to investigate an unexplained disappearance. Multiple murderess Rachel Solando is loose somewhere on this barren island, despite having been kept under constant surveillance in a locked, guarded cell. As a killer hurricane bears relentlessly down on the island, hints of radical experimentation and covert government machinations add darker, more sinister shades to an already bizarre case. Because nothing at Ashecliffe Hospital is remotely what it seems. --This text refers to the audio_download edition.

From AudioFile

In 1993, Dr. Lester Sheehan begins a journal to remember "Teddy and his poor dead wife. . . and those twin terrors, Rachel Solando and Andrew Laeddis." With this narrative device in place, the story flashes back to 1954, to Shutter Island's Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane. U.S. Marshall Teddy Daniels is called after a female inmate vanishes from a locked room. One difference between simply listening and having a listening experience is Tom Stechschulte. He doesn't merely perform characters; he channels them. Main characters, doctors, nurses, inmates, and orderlies have believable individual voices and personalities. Lehane twists a devastating hurricane, possible unethical experiments, and enough secrets to justify paranoia into a psychological thriller that works most of the time. Stechschulte's magic makes it work the rest. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to the audio_download edition.

About the Author

Dennis Lehane is the author of ten previous novels—including the New York Times bestsellers Live by Night; Moonlight Mile; Gone, Baby, Gone; Mystic River; Shutter Island; and The Given Day—as well as Coronado, a collection of short stories and a play. He lives in California with his family. --This text refers to the audio_download edition.

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