The novel revolves around three boys who grow up as friends in Boston — Dave Boyle, Sean Devine, and Jimmy Marcus. When the story opens, Dave is abducted by child molesters while he, Sean, and Jimmy are horsing around on a neighborhood street. Dave escapes and returns home days later, emotionally shattered by his experience. The book then moves forward 25 years: Sean has become a homicide detective, Jimmy is an ex-convict who currently owns a convenience store, and Dave is a shell of a man. Jimmy’s daughter disappears and is found brutally murdered in a city park, and that same night, Dave comes home to his wife, covered in blood. Sean is assigned to investigate the murder, and the three childhood friends are caught up in each other’s lives again.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Dennis Lehane, born August 4, 1965 in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, is an American writer of Irish origin, author of detective novels.
Dennis Lehane is the author of a city, Boston, the permanent setting of the plots of his novels, with the exception of Shutter Island (2003) which is set on an island off the coast of the city.
To the perfection of particularly dark plots that reflect the harshness of a large American city today, Lehane often opposes the lightness of a very ironic writing style. His favorite theme remains childhood abuse, an aftermath of his former work as an educator with troubled children, from which he draws accents of truth that give his books their full scope and importance.
His novels have inspired many films, including Mystic River (2003) by Clint Eastwood, starring Kevin Bacon, Sean Penn and Tim Robbins, Gone Baby Gone (2007) by Ben Affleck, with his brother Casey Affleck as the main character, and Shutter Island (2010) by Martin Scorsese, starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
