Mystic River

Dennis Lehane

Lehane is still an "under the radar" writer, to an extent, but his reputation grows with each novel. Mystic River, his fifth, should help his rep along just fine.

It's the story of three kids, later grown-ups. Ostensibly it's about the abduction of one of them and how the effects of that abduction have repercussions later on in their lives. But as with all the best mystery novels (and it's really something of a stretch to classify this as a mystery, actually), it's about a whole lot more than that-- class consciousness in the irish sections of Boston, the ways in which different people deal with traumatic situations, family connections, that sort of thing.

If you're a diehard mystery fan, don't let my parenthetical in the last paragraph throw you off. There _is_ a mystery here (one of our boys, a homicide investigator, is tapped to solve the disappearance of the daughter of another of our boys, now a reputed crimelord, and our third boy is the prime suspect), though it takes a backseat to Lehane's exploration of his three main characters and the ways in which they interact with the world around them. It's different enough from Lehane's previous work that you should go in without expectations, but it's a satisfying read nonetheless.