The year is 1954. U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels and his new partner, Chuck Aule, have come to Shutter Island, off of the Boston harbour. The island is home to the Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane. The marshalls have come to investigate the disappearance of a patient.
Multiple murderess Rachel Solando is loose somewhere on this remote and barren island, despite having been kept in a locked cell under constant surveillance. As a killer hurricane relentlessly bears down on them, the strange case takes on even darker, more sinister shades—with hints of radical experimentation, horrifying surgeries, and lethal countermoves made in the cause of a covert shadow war. No one is going to escape Shutter Island unscathed, because nothing at Ashecliffe Hospital is what it seems. But then neither is Teddy Daniels.
The confusing plot builds up over the four days on the island, only to be resolved in a gigantic plot twist at the end. The book is insanely well written and brilliantly constructed, and is easily one of the best psychological thrillers I’ve ever read. Absolute madness, in the truest sense of the word.
Lehane does a great job with character development and keeping things smoothly developing from its origins.