Since We Fell by Dennis Lehane

Rating: WARTY!

This was an audiobook I did not like. I liked Shutter Island and the graphic novel based on it, and even the movie. I don't recall disliking Mystic River, although I read that before I started blogging reviews, so I can't go back and check on exactly what I thought about it. This one, however, was a disaster and a DNF and left me with a bad taste in my mouth and no immediate desire to read any more Lehane. Julia Whelan's reading (or performance as it's pretentiously described on the cover) wasn't very good either, so that didn't help.

It started out perfectly fine, but about a tenth of the way through it started getting bogged down in asides that seemed irrelevant to the original thrust of the story, which was this woman's search for her father. From what I read of other negative reviews, it doesn't even stop doing a one eighty there, either, but instead of a normal geometry one-eighty bringing it back around, it goes off into some parallel universe. In view of that, I'm so relieved I quit it when I did, and simultaneously quit wasting my life on this drivel.

The story is about Rachel, an up and coming journalist, whose mother dies unexpectedly, leaving her completely in the dark about who her father was. She has very few clues and a PI suggests she not pursue it because it would be a waste of her money. When she finds a better lead, he takes the case and they finally narrow it down to a guy who turns out to be the one she was looking for, but in a twist, it also turns out he's not her biological father and the secrecy over keeping Rachel in the dark is what caused him to leave her mother. Now he's happily married with children of his own, but is still a father figure to Rachel.

With his help she tracks down the most likely candidate for fatherhood, but he's dead! From that point on we jump many years to where she's an important TV news anchor and the story becomes obsessed with Haiti for an inordinately long time. Yes, it was a awful tragedy of the kind that should never have happened in the first place, much less be repeated, but which will, you know, be repeated, humans being what they are, but it was nothing to do with her father and from what I've read in other reviews, nothing to do with what happens in the rest of the book which also has nothing to do with her father.

More than one reviewer suggested that the author had bits and pieces of several stories lying around with no idea where to take them, and so he decided to fit them all into one! When you're Lennon and McCartney, mashing two different songs into one actually works, such as with A Day in the Life for example, but Lehane doesn't seem to be blessed with that skill. So based on what I read, and regardless of others' reviews, I can't recommend this, but remember that I listened to only ten percent before I skipped out on it. So, a confused and boring mess is what this sounded like to me and I can't recommend it based on what I listened to.

Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane, Christian de Metter

Rating: WORTHY!

I favorably reviewed the print version of this novel in November of 2017. This graphic novel version is also a worthy read, although I have to say I wasn't overly enamored of the artwork. It was mostly sepia-toned and was passable. Others may approve of it more than I, but to me it looked rather muddy and scrappy. These shortcomings - at least the scrappiness - became much more apparent in the full color images. However the story overall was well told and the art work was not disastrous. Please read my review from November for my full take on the novel. This version would make a decent substitute if you don't want to read the full-length story.

Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane

Rating: WORTHY!

Set in 1954, the story begins with two US Marshals setting out for Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane which is housed in an old fort on Shutter Island. On the ferry to the island where the story opens, Teddy Daniels has a new partner named Chuck Aule with whom he has never worked. Teddy is throwing up in the bathroom.

They are sent to investigate the disappearance of a female inmate named Rachel Solando, who evidently murdered her own three children, so the story has all the hallmarks of a locked room mystery. I saw the film made from this novel some time ago and barely remembered it, so my impression was that I didn't like it very much, but I decided to give the novel a go anyway since I'd liked this author's novel Mystic River. After I read this I watched the movie again and liked it, but was not overwhelmed by it.

The novel was good though, and I found that the reader quickly learns that not everything is as it seems here. People appear to be keeping secrets. There are hints that perhaps some radical experimentation is taking place on the island on some of the patients. It doesn't help that real clues are hard to come by, that many of the potential witnesses are literally insane, that Teddy is suffering migraines, and that a hurricane is coming down hard on the island. Worse than this, Teddy has an agenda - to find the guy who he thinks burned down his home and thereby killed his wife, and he thinks Andrew Laeddis is somewhere in Ashecliffe.

It became apparent at a point early in the story that someone was deluding themselves, but I could never tell whether it was going to take the predictable route or if there really was something else going on. It took the predictable route, but that didn't make it any less of a worthy read for me. I enjoyed it and I recommend it.