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Sometimes you have to make choices. When you reach a certain level of excellence in what you choose, no one is going to be fully happy at the crossroads. I think it's safe to say that most serious literary readers never head the name. Dennis Lehane. They have heard of his works though. They heard of it outside the aisles of the book store and probably in a cinema hall, while choosing what movie they're going to see with their significant others. The novels of Dennis Lehane have been behind three blockbusters since 2004: Shutter Island, Gone Baby Gone and by far his strongest offering yet, Mystic River.
If you were touched by watching the movie, then you owe to yourself (you literally owe to yourself like a goddamn mortgage) to pick up the novel. Those who will be expecting a transcript of the bleak (but very good) Clint Eastwood movie are in for a serious shock. While Lehane is often categorized in the money-writer pool like King, Patterson, Rowling and cie. He couldn't be any further from them in terms of style. Reading a Dennis Lehane novel is like experiencing the perfect fusion of James Ellroy, Raymond Chandler and Jonathan Franzen. His stories are grim and turn around unspeakable crimes, their subjects are the deepest characters and their reaction to those crimes will buld a story so strong and so touching, it will knock you off your rockers.
Mystic River is about the signification of murder and unspeakable violence in a tightly knit community. About how no one can be a winner in those situations. The main characters Jimmy, Sean and Dave are marked early by this violence and therefore, it dictated the course of their lives in accordance with their personalities. Jimmy became a criminal and did an jail stretch, Sean became a police officer and Dave, the early victim of violent pedophiles became a permanent victime, a fragile human being, living in the constant fear that violence will sweep his life away again.
When it does.
It's the whole life of the neighborhood that's falling apart.
Mystic River is what a modern, completely fictional In Cold Blood would look like. The liberties Lehane can allow himself with fiction and his savant knowledge of the dark side of human mind make this an object quite unique in the History of literature. Lehane might not experiment with the language or doesn't draw the zeitgeist as well as Jonathan Franzen does, but what he does, he does better than anybody else. And it's to identify the very essence of what makes us human.
Next time you go do the book store, don't be fooled by puffy letters, screaming colors, mass market paperback format or any sort of physical proximity to James Patterson's novels. Mystic River will kick your ass and leave you changed.
