MYSTIC RIVER
By Dennis Lehane

Elmore Leonard:

Get Dennis Lehane's MYSTIC RIVER. Boy does he know how to write.

Stephen King:

The superb detective novels of Dennis Lehane became a kind of lifeline for me.

New York Times:

Among contemporary thrillers, there's no better reason than MYSTIC RIVER to stay home with a good book. [It's] terrific: soulful, atmospheric, suspenseful and propelled by deep, wrenching emotions . . . a beautifully nuanced story that is destined to be actors' catnip. The author draws even his story's incidental figures as sharply as he draws its major ones, with mesmerizing results.
— Janet Maslin

New York Times Book Review:

[A] powerhouse of a crime novel ... Lehane spares nothing in his wrenching descriptions of how a crime in the neighbiorhood kills the neighborhood, taking it down house by house, family by family.
— Marilyn Stasio

People:

[MYSTIC RIVER is] pitch-perfect, the suspense and pacing impeccable. Combining the tension of a thriller with the dramatic inevitability of Greek tragedy, [it] ranks as a high-water mark for an author who is navigating his way to literary stardom. A shattering, suspenseful novel of love and betrayal.

Newsweek:

Nobody does it better than [Lehane]. He's got near-perfect pitch ... MYSTIC RIVER is his best book by far. Like all his writing, it shimmers with great dialogue and a complex view of the world.
— Malcolm Jones

CNN:

It is a rare crime novelist who uses a murder mystery to plumb the deeper mysteries of the human soul. Dennis Lehane proves that he is a rare crime novelist with "Mystic River." Cloaked by the trappings of a police procedural, the book is a hauntingly compelling examination of the lies we tell ourselves in order to hide our miseries from ourselves.

Publishers Weekly:

Lehane ventures beyond his acclaimed private eye series with this 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.