What we're reading Wednesday

Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane
Morrow, 2005

With a movie adaptation set to hit theaters in just a month, now felt like the right time to finally read Dennis Lehane’s best-selling suspense novel, Shutter Island. Nothing creeps me out more than something set in a mental institution, and this novel was no exception. It’s 1954, and Federal Marshal Teddy Daniels and his partner have been sent to an island insane asylum to find a missing patient. But when a storm sets in and the doctors start acting suspicious, Teddy begins to question his mission—and his sanity.

“Beyond the wall, that way”—he pointed past Ward B—”is the original commander’s quarters. You probably saw it on the walk up. Cost a fortune to build at the time, and the commander was relieved of his duties when Uncle Sam got the bill. You should see the place.”

“Who lives there now?” Teddy said.

“Dr. Cawley,” McPherson said. “None of this would exist if it weren’t for Dr. Cawley. And the warden. They created something really unique here.”

They’d looped around the back of the compound, met more manacled gardeners and orderlies, many hoeing a dark loam against the rear wall. One of the gardeners, a middle-aged woman with wispy wheat hair gone almost bald on top, stared at Teddy as he passed, and then raised a single finger to her lips. Teddy noticed a dark red scar, thick as licorice, that ran across her throat.

Related in BookPage: our interview with Lehane for The Given Day.

After the jump, you can watch the trailer for Martin Scorcese’s adaptation Shutter Island—like the novel, it’s guaranteed to give you the creeps!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdumGs1qoXM]