This 2003 suspense novel has one of those twisted endings that make you want to throw it against a wall after you’re done. It seemed to be going along just fine, slowly building in momentum, taking you on a steady course of suspense to its conclusion and then thunk: an ending so opposite of where you want it to go it sets you off to curse that you ever got it.
I had picked up “Shutter Island” because I heard it was coming out as a movie in October 2009 with Leo DiCaprio and directed by Martin Scorsese, and because Dennis Lehane wrote it and his other novels “Gone, Baby, Gone” (1998) and “Mystic River” (2001) became somewhat intriguing movies.
Set in 1954, the story begins as U.S. Marshals Teddy Daniels and Chuck Aule are called to investigate the disappearance of a patient at a hospital for the criminally insane on Shutter Island, off the Massachusetts coast. Daniels, whose beloved wife died in a fire two years prior, has ulterior reasons for taking the case, notably finding the insane criminal housed there who caused her death.
Soon though the deputy marshals find that the medical staff at Shutter Island, especially the director, is stonewalling their investigation, and they discern that radical, illegal treatments are being administered to the patients as part of a secret program. (For other novels on nefarious experimentation taking place on islands, you might also recall: “The Island of Dr. Moreau” (1896), “Dr. No” (1958) and “Plum Island” (1997) to name just a few.)
“Shutter Island” picks up steam as a hurricane hits, cutting off communication to the mainland and enabling more insane patients to escape from their cells. Aule disappears, and Daniels believes he’s being slipped psychotic drugs. He makes a dash to leave the island but is intercepted. As clues unravel, he begins to doubt everything, including his memory, his partner and his sanity.
Lehane gives the book a surreal and really creepy kind of ending, but it’s sort of just lame and leaves you wanting something else. Perhaps they will do better with the movie, which has an all-star cast (even Ben Kingsley and Patricia Clarkson!), and of course, also Scorsese who’s directed “Cape Fear”-freaky-kind of suspense movies before.
