It's a mental hospital...for the criminally insane

Book 10: Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane

My rating: ****1/2

I don't even know where to begin with this one. I just saw the movie with a friend from work, and I decided a long time ago that I wanted to read the book before I saw the movie. So I chose it for this week's read. Ironically enough it's also the March read for a group I'm a part of on goodreads.com - The Next Best Book Club. Anyway. :-) This book was just a page turner - a good psychological thriller. It was nice to read something like that for a change. Not that I'm not enjoying The Chronicles of Narnia, but I wouldn't call them page turners...

Teddy Daniels is a U.S. Marshall. And a widower. His wife Dolores died 2 years prior due to a fire in their apartment that was caused by a man named Andrew Laeddis. The book opens with Teddy on a ferry to Shutter Island to check out some strange happenings at Ashecliffe Hospital for the criminally insane. A patient by the name of Rachel Solando has escaped from her cell, and Teddy and his partner Chuck have been commissioned to find her. While searching for Rachel, Teddy becomes suspicious that there are secret government operations going on at the hospital where doctors are using patients (violent offenders that nobody cares about anyway) as lab rats for their hallucinogens, lobotomies, etc. He also discovers that Andrew Laeddis is a patient at Ashecliffe, but there don't seem to be any records of his existence. So Teddy's job quickly becomes more complicated as he needs to find Rachel, expose Ashecliffe, and rid the world of Laeddis. But.....

...everything isn't always as it seems. Is it?

I was beginning to question my own sanity as Teddy's began to erode. Well, not really. But the mind is powerful, and the brain is a complex and mysterious thing. How far is it possible to go to deny reality? Can you erase tragic events by simply creating a new persona and living a fictitious life? Those are questions Teddy has to deal with, and the conclusion is nothing short of shocking.