Mystic River
A Novel
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"There are threads in our lives. You pull one, and everything else gets affected." When they were children, Sean Devine, Jimmy Marcus, and Dave Boyle were friends. 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. When Jimmy Marcus's daughter is found murdered, Sean Devine is assigned to the case. His personal life unraveling, he must go back into a world he thought he'd left behind to confront not only the violence, of the present but the nightmares of his past. His investigation brings him into conflict with Jimmy Marcus, who finds that his old criminal impulses tempt him to solve the crime with brutal justice. And then there is Dave Boyle, who came home the night Jimmy's daughter died covered with someone else's blood. While Sean Devine attempts to use the law to return peace and order to the neighborhood, Jimmy Marcus finds his need for vengeance pushing him ever closer to a moral abyss from which lie wont be able to return, and Dave's wife, Celeste, sleeps at night with a man she fears may very well be a monster. a monster who fathered her child and hides his true nature from everyone, possibly even himself. A tense and unnerving psychological thriller, Mystic River is also an epic novel of love and loyalty, faith and family, in which people irrevocably marked by the past find themselves on a collision course with the darkest truths of their own hidden selves.
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Author Extras
Reading Guides:
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Awards for Mystic River |
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Barry Award
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Anthony Award
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Massachusetts Book Award in Fiction
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Barry Award
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Massachusetts Book Award in Fiction
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Anthony Award
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Massachusetts Book Award in Fiction
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Anthony Award
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Critical Praise for
Mystic River
"Dennis Lehane might be the best mystery writer we have in this country today."
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Boston magazine
“Heartbreaking....Like Bruce Springsteen’s song ‘The River,’ Lehane’s Mystic River looks back at what might have been, the ways in which the past impinges on the present. And like the song, you can’t get it out of your head. “Springsteen’s narrator says, “Now those memories come back to haunt me They haunt me like a curse Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true Or is it something worse?” Ask Jimmy Marcus, Dave Boyle, Sean Devine. Ask Dennis Lehane.”
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Orlando Sentinel
"Stylish...Mystic River is Lehane's best book...it shimmers with great dialogue and a complex view of the world."
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Newsweek
"A powerhouse of a...novel...heart-scorching...penetrating...(Lehane's) deeply scored characterizations of the three former friends carries the soul of this story...if you really want to know when innocence dies, just look these people in the eye."
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The New York Times Book Review
“(Lehane is) a mystery master...a tense, insightful whodunit...haunting.”
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New York Post
Praise for Mystic River, “A heartbreaker.”
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Boston Herald
Praise for Mystic River, “A powerhouse of a . . . novel . . . heart-scorching . . . penetrating.”
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New York Times Book Review
Praise for Mystic River, “A powerhouse of a...novel...heart-scorching...penetrating...(Lehane’s) deeply scored characterizations of the three former friends carry the soul of this story...if you really want to know when innocence dies, just look these people in the eye.”
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New York Times Book Review
“A spellbinding tale...a powerfully lacerating story, by an author who knows every block of the neighborhood and every hair on his character’s heads.”
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Kirkus Reviews
“An emotionally wrenching crime drama about the effects of a savage killing on a tightly knit, blue-collar Boston neighborhood...Lehane’s story slams the reader with uncomfortable images, a beautifully rendered setting and an unnerving finale.”
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Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Menace charges the atmosphere of this crackling thriller.”
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People
“A gut-clenching winner. . . . His ability to create crystal clear portraits of humanity and then place them in the darker side of life is a writer’s true gift.”
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USA Today
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From Dennis Lehane, the award-winning author of Mystic River, Shutter Island, and the Kenzie-Gennaro series, comes a striking collection of five short stories and a play. A small southern town gives birth to a dangerous man with a broken heart and a high-powered rifle. . . . A young girl, caught...
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