But Sean would be a lot more worried if he knew what Dave’s wife Celeste knows: that hours after catching sight of Katie in the last bar she visited on the night of her death, Dave staggered home covered with somebody else’s blood. It would be just like Jimmy, Sean knows, to ignore his friend’s official efforts and go after the killer himself. And he’s got an especially close eye on Jimmy, whose marriage brought him close to the aptly named Savage family and who’s done hard time for robbery. Sean knows that both Dave and Jimmy have been in more than their share of trouble in the past. Though Dave escapes after a few days, he never really outlives his ordeal, and 25 years later it’s Jimmy’s turn to join him in hell when his daughter Katie is shot and beaten to death in the wilds of Pen Park, and State Trooper Sean, just returned from suspension, gets assigned to the case. Sean Devine and Jimmy Marcus are playing, or fighting, outside Sean’s parents’ house in the Point neighborhood of East Buckingham when a car pulls up, one of the two men inside flashes a badge, and Sean and Jimmy’s friend Dave Boyle gets bundled inside, allegedly to be driven home to his mother for a scolding but actually to get kidnapped.

And then there is Dave Boyle, who came home the night Jimmy's daughter died covered in someone else's blood.After five adventures for Boston shamus Patrick Kenzie and his off-again lover Angela Gennaro ( Prayers for Rain, 1999, etc.), Lehane tries his hand at a crossover novel that’s as dark as any of Patrick’s cases.Įven the 1975 prologue is bleak. His investigation brings him into conflict with Jimmy Marcus, who finds his old criminal impulses tempt him to solve the crime with brutal justice. His personal life unravelling, he must go back into a world he thought he'd left behind. When Jimmy Marcus' daughter is found murdered, Sean Devine is assigned to the case. And Dave Boyle is trying to hold his marriage together and keep his demons at bay - demons that urge him to do horrific things. Jimmy Marcus is an ex-con who owns a corner store.

Twenty-five years later, Sean Devine is a homicide detective. One boy got in the car, two did not, and something terrible happened - something that ended their friendship and changed all three boys forever. But then a strange car pulled up their street. When they were children, Sean Devine, Jimmy Marcus and Dave Boyle were friends. You pull one, and everything else gets affected.

Mystic River by Dennis Lehane