When was mystic river written

But then a strange car pulled tip to their street. One boy got into 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 Devine is a homicide detective. Jimmy Marcus is an ex-con who owns a corner store.

And Dave Boyle is trying to hold his marriage together and keep his demons at bay — demons that urge him to do terrible things.

Izzy I guess so. I live in Boston, particularly in East Boston which has kind of a large Hispanic community, but there are still some Italians here and the …more I guess so. I live in Boston, particularly in East Boston which has kind of a large Hispanic community, but there are still some Italians here and there. Boston is a farcry from Lehane's novel which is based on a Boston Lehane grew up in the 70's and 80's.

Gentrification has been going on probably since like the late 80's I want to say? And it's still going on today. In short, yes. There probably are still some communities like these out there, but I'm sure Lehane kinda exaggerates just a little bit. This question contains spoilers Would really appreciate your help, thanks, Matt hide spoiler ]. Wrongleveeeeeeer There is almost no detail of the child abuse. The violent nature of the murder is described in police detail, but is only as disturbing as that kind o …more There is almost no detail of the child abuse.

The violent nature of the murder is described in police detail, but is only as disturbing as that kind of thing is, by necessity. It is mostly a book about characters--their motivations, their loves, their losses I say take your chances and get them the book. It's a great read. See all 10 questions about Mystic River…. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 4. Rating details.

More filters. Sort order. Start your review of Mystic River. Once upon a time, three boys were fighting in the street when two men claiming to be plainclothes cops show up.

One kid gets in the car, the others stay put, and their lives will never be the same. Decades later, Dave Boyle, the kid who got into the car, is accused of killing the daughter of Jimmy Marcus, one of the other boys, and the third boy has grown up to be Sean Devine, the cop in charge of the case. Did Boyle do it? And if he didn't, can Sean find the real killer?

Yeah, was supposed Once upon a time, three boys were fighting in the street when two men claiming to be plainclothes cops show up. Yeah, was supposed to be the year of Dennis Lehane for me. It probably would have been had I not discovered George Pelecanos. However, I'm back aboard the Lehane Train now and quite pleased. While Mystic River is normally classified as a thriller, it's so much more than that, an exploration of growing up and what a traumatic childhood event can blossom into.

Mystic River is the tale of three Boston boys who grew up to be very different Boston men. Dave Boyle has drifted from job to job, never quite managing to bury his abduction experience. Jimmy Marcus is a former career criminal who has gone straight and become a family man. And Sean Devine is a cop with a wife he hasn't seen in over a year and a child he's not sure is his. From the beginning, Lehane kept the waters sufficiently muddy to hold my interest. None of the three leads are very simple characters.

Dave's got his childhood baggage but still tries to be the best husband and father he can be. Jimmy was once a criminal and is still a hard man but is a loving family man. Sean is a supercop but his marriage is in ruins and he's coming off a suspension for something very petty. Once Sean is on the case, the book becomes very hard to put down, like it's been duct-taped to your hands.

The writing is everything I came to expect from the Kenzie and Gennaro series and then some. I suppose I'll track down the movie now. View all 29 comments. Intense, stunning, and shocking. And I always wanted to know what was going on in Jimmy's head after the last stunt that he pulled.

Movies would never tell us that, and that's why books are always better View all 5 comments. Nov 11, Ahmad Sharabiani rated it really liked it Shelves: novels , united-states , crime-mystery , thriller , fiction , 21th-century , mystery.

The Mystic River is not only a psychological, terrifying, and stressful novel, but also an epic one, describing love, loyalty, camaraderie, faith, and family. The story of this book is about people whose past has invariably affected their future, and who find themselves in dark situations, which exposes them to their inner and hidden selves. The novel revolves around three boys who grow up as friends i Mystic River, Dennis Lehane Mystic River is a novel by Dennis Lehane that was published in When the story opens, we see Dave abducted by child molesters while he, Sean, and Jimmy are horsing around on a neighborhood street.

Dave escapes and returns home days later, emotionally shattered by his experience. The book then moves forward 25 years: Sean has become a homicide detective, Jimmy is an ex-convict who currently owns a convenience store, and Dave is a shell of a man. Jimmy's daughter disappears and is found brutally murdered in a city park, and that same night, Dave comes home to his wife, covered in blood. Sean is assigned to investigate the murder, and the three childhood friends are caught up in each other's lives again.

View 2 comments. Sep 22, Kemper rated it it was amazing Shelves: crime-mystery , reread , favorites , modern-lit. One of the kids, Dave Boyle, ends up being taken by them and endures several days of abuse before managing to escape.

Twenty-five years later Dave still lives in the same old neighborhood with his wife and son. He went on to become the leader of a crew of thieves, but a stretch in prison and caring for his young daughter, Katie, set Jimmy straight. Now he runs a corner grocery store in the neighborhood. As Sean investigates the crime Jimmy has to deal with his grief. Dave was one of the last people to see Katie alive when she was out at a bar with some girlfriends, and he had no reason to hurt her.

Lehane takes all of these factors and adds a few more like what gentrification was doing to their old neighborhood to create one of the ultimate character driven pieces of crime fiction.

Considering the ending and reading this now, nearly 20 years after it was first published, made me think that there could be another story by now. View all 10 comments. Dec 01, Trudi rated it it was amazing Shelves: favorites , , prose-that-sings , made-into-movie , modern-lit , crime-mystery , a-sense-of-place , noir-is-the-new-black , love-the-movie , audiobook.

Just before picking this book up - my first Lehane it won't be my last - I came across a quote by him illuminating the working-class, blue-collar nature of noir: In Greek tragedy, they fall from great heights.

In noir, they fall from the curb. I love this quote. It slices right to the heart of who we are reading about, and even why we are reading about them. In Mystic River , Lehane is shooting from both barrels; he intuitively knows who he is writing about and where -- the gritty, depressed, w Just before picking this book up - my first Lehane it won't be my last - I came across a quote by him illuminating the working-class, blue-collar nature of noir: In Greek tragedy, they fall from great heights.

In Mystic River , Lehane is shooting from both barrels; he intuitively knows who he is writing about and where -- the gritty, depressed, working-class neighborhoods of South Boston and the largely white, blue-collar families who live there. These are residents bound to one another when not by blood, then by loyalties forged from childhood friendships and the kinship that comes from growing up in the same neighborhood. A shared history, a sense of community, no matter how co-dependent, damaging or predatory.

Lehane's characters are so vivid and three-dimensional they sigh and bleed across the pages. But you won't love them. They are beyond flawed, and you could even argue beyond redemption.

Lehane is not writing about beauty and love or hope and healing. Lehane is painting a portrait of despair and guilt. His characters are damaged goods in many ways, with painful histories that have consumed them with a slow-burning rage. The love Jimmy Marcus has for his eldest daughter Katie is primal, almost animalistic in its fierceness.

When a savage beating and shooting violently rips her away from him, Jimmy vows to see her killer brought to justice, one way or another. Who could have killed Katie Marcus? Nineteen years old, sweet and non-threatening, a good friend, a loving sister, working part-time in her father's neighborhood corner store. When Jimmy's childhood friend Sean is brought in to lead the investigation, there are more questions than answers to be found.

It doesn't take long however, before Sean and his senior partner Whitey begin looking hard at Dave Boyle - another childhood friend from the neighborhood with dark secrets of his own.

The handling of the mystery here, the construction, the pacing, the clues and final reveal, it's all flawlessly done. My only regret reading this novel is that I had seen the film first. While already knowing who killed Katie did not diminish my enjoyment, I can only imagine the sheer thrill this book delivers at the moment of climax if you didn't know.

I found the women in this story to be at least as interesting as the men, if not more so. Why go to the father? Why not the police? What did she think was going to happen?

She knew the rules of the neighborhood. Did she really imagine Jimmy would not act, unequivocally and ruthlessly? She signed Dave's death warrant the moment she decided to tell Jimmy what she thought she knew. She got her husband killed and unraveled her own life, perhaps even her own sanity, in one careless impulse.

Jimmy's wife Annabeth is ruthless in her own way, thinking only of her own family and status in the neighborhood. Her acceptance of Jimmy's violence, her pride in it, is practically sociopathic. Her husband won't find the cure for cancer, but dammit, he looks after his own.

He does what needs to be done, like a King that rules over his realm. Her support is icky but oh so very real. Her disdain of Celeste's weakness, and her betrayal of her husband, more revealing of character than any other act or a thousand words. It is immensely engrossing and immeasurably rewarding. I did not just love it, I lived it. A word on the audiobook: There is an abridged version available out there with a very poor reader. Avoid that one. I listened to the unabridged version and it is fantastic.

The reader's voice is strong and he carries the Boston accent nicely without it overpowering the story. View all 26 comments. Every adult human being has the chance to choose a personally favored path of life considering it isn't predeterminated by illnesses, accidents etc. Lehane might be more well-known because of the successful movie adaption with Leonardo DiCaprio and Ben Kingsley of his thriller Shutter Island , but when it comes to exploring human minds in their deepest psychological profundities, Mystic River is where the author truly shines.

This novel which has also been adapted into a movie starring Tim Robbins, Sean Penn and Kevin Bacon focuses on three young childhood friends - Sean, Jimmy and Dave - whose friendship was changed forever when one of the boys was pulled into a strange car and had to go through something which could not be worse as an incisive childhood experience. About twenty years later, they have all grown into men with their own more or less intact families although you might as well scratch the "more or" part.

The story gets going when one of the friend's daughters is brutally murdered, another one of them starts to investigate the case as a police detective and the third friend soon turns into one of the suspects himself - with very strong evidence pointing towards him. This is no easy thriller to get through; with his elaborate descriptions of a Boston crime scene and the complex plot twists and dynamics between the relationships, Lehane keeps the intellectual niveau on a high level throughout the entire course of the novel as he explores failing marriages, bursting families and shocking revelations.

As he did with "Shutter Island", he once again managed to challenge my personal perception of what human minds can be capable of. It might be fiction, but the author managed to write it in such a convincing way as if it was a nightmare come true.

Dennis Lehane refrains from fast pace and instead relies on extensively detailed descriptions, painting a vivid picture filled with a dark atmosphere. This made it sometimes easy to put the book down again, yet all the time the book included enough potential to prompt the reader to return to reading. You may call the novel a classic 'whodunnit' tale, but it's more than that - so much more.

Mystic River might not be a masterpiece, but it's still everything you can possibly look for as a reader of crime fiction. It wasn't my first Lehane novel, and it definitely won't be my last either. View all 35 comments.

Her blood was caffeine. Your whole life, you wished for something like this. To be involved in a drama. Jimmy, Sean, and Davey. The boys. They grew up together, from different parts of town. But at eleven, boys are rough and tumble, and who cares where you live? One of you gets in when told to, while the other two back off.

Davey escaped after four days of abuse which is never described, only referred to , and is now a seemingly quiet, pleasant man with an uneventful life.

He was a baseball star in high school and is now married with a young son. Jimmy Marcus also grew up in the Flats, was a happy-go-lucky hoodlum who got a little rougher over the years. He is now an ex-con, running a corner store and determined to go straight.

They were just the Savages, a brood, a pack, a collection of limbs and armpits and knees and tangled hair that seemed to move in a cloud of dust like the Tasmanian Devil. Sean Devine is separated, unhappily, achingly so. All three are still haunted by the men and the car that took Davey away. Davey, of course, but Sean and Jimmy are as well. What would have happened if? Could we have stopped it? We watched them drive him away.

Sean would miss it. Jimmy took the glove and he felt good about it. Jimmy came from the Flats and was entitled to fend for himself however he could. This is one of the men who stopped the boys in the road.

The other one looked sick. You know. You just know. No question, I just know. View all 23 comments. Jan 15, Dave Schaafsma rated it it was amazing Shelves: mystery-detective-thriller , books-loved We bury our sins here. We wash them clean. I thought it was a great movie, seen more than a decade ago, but it is also a very great book, with real depth and passion, a story of tragic loss. Yes, it's a thriller, a mystery, but sometimes works rise above their genres, of course, to be great literature.

Shutter Island is very good, a kind of homage to forties noir films; Since We Fell deals with upper-middle-class yuppie types, and both are well-written page-turners.

In the other two books there is nothing approaching the depth of character and knowledge that he lovingly devotes to this Irish Catholic neighborhood, nothing like the compassion he has for each and every one of these people. I might talk in a lightly spoiler-ish way about some of the early parts of the book—not the ending, promise—because I figure thousands of you have read this or seen it by now. When the story opens, we see Dave abducted by two child molesters posing as cops, while he, Sean, and Jimmy are horsing around on a neighborhood street.

Fast forward 25 years and Sean is a depressed cop with marital issues, Jimmy is a an ex-con on a second marriage, and Dave is pretty much an empty shell of a guy, trying to keep his marriage together and the demons at bay.

When Jimmy's daughter is murdered, Sean is assigned to the case. We think we know a lot at this point, but we are going to have unravel a lot of history before we are through more than pages, but it actually reads quickly, as it is so well-written and what happens is engaging , some of the stories entertwined. Threads in our lives. You pull one, and everything else gets affected. It's work. The healing love of family—the love of children—is an important part of this community and this novel.

But is it enough to make up for the past? Mystic River is a majestic but also intensely character-driven thriller that explores how a group of friends in a community can survive who are fiercely loyal, yet hampered by ignorance, lies, self-deception, betrayal and loss.

Where did we expect to go? And why were we never as happy as we thought we'd be once we got there? A great day for a parade. Or is it a ritual that masks the truth, that hides real feelings? The parade follows a funeral, another moment of a communal moment of healing, we can only hope. But as with the love of family and friends, is any social ritual enough to make up for the weight of the past? I loved this book and immediately re-ordered the film to see again.

View all 6 comments. Shelves: favorites , essential-crime , dicks , re-read-list , author-lehane , great-endings , urban-gothic.

I read this masterpiece a while ago before I joined Goodreads and I've been contemplating posting a review because it's on the top of my favorites list. But for a while I wasn't sure I could say anything that could do justice to this remarkable book. Not only is it Dennis Lehane's greatest book and that's saying a lot , this modern tragedy sets the standard for all contemporary crime dramas and thrillers. It's one of the only books that I would consider near perfect and I would recommend it to I read this masterpiece a while ago before I joined Goodreads and I've been contemplating posting a review because it's on the top of my favorites list.

It's one of the only books that I would consider near perfect and I would recommend it to anyone. It's the novel that stuck with me the longest after reading it, and if I was forced to name a top favorite book, this would probably be it. This gush of praise might not be much of a review View all 7 comments. Nov 03, Nancy rated it it was amazing Shelves: audiobooks. It is a compelling plot-driven story with such well-written and fleshed out characters that it is pretty much just as equally a character-driven story.

It is about consequences, family, friendship, and loyalty. Lehane's writing game is strong. Not a spoiler because the synopsis tells you that Jimmy's daughter is murder "I'm just saying there are threads, okay? Not a spoiler because the synopsis tells you that Jimmy's daughter is murdered, but when Jimmy finds out about his daughter, his reaction is so visceral, I could feel it and my heart broke for him.

I had already seen the movie years ago which was also fantastic, but I wish I would have read the book first. I was absorbed in this gripping story from start to finish and highly recommend it. View all 21 comments. Regina Now this is one I've previously tried to listen to on audio but set aside. I wonder if I'd enjoy it more in print. Which did you do? Now this is one I've previously tried to listen to on audio but set aside.

Nancy I listened to the audio, Regina. Once more, even though he tried so hard to renounce his former self, Jimmy picks up where he left off, bent on unearthing the unknown sadistic killer. However, can more blood appease the pain of a parent? Summer, In a tight blue-collar Boston neighborhood, three kids are playing when one is abducted and sexually abused for several days. Jump ahead: the victim, Dave, is haunted by memories and protective of his own son.

Jimmy is an ex-con and father of three. Sean is a homicide detective, estranged from his pregnant wife. When Jimmy's teen daughter Katie dies, Sean investigates, Dave's a suspect, and Jimmy vows to find the killer before the cops. The dead girl has a boyfriend whose long-missing father has a history with Jimmy.

The boyfriend's a suspect, and when ballistics turns up a link to a gun owned by the young man's father, the case breaks. In the background, wives move events along. Sign In.