All of the characters-particularly Teddy, haunted by the tragic death of his wife-are wonderful creations, but no more wonderful than the spot-on dialogue with which Lehane brings them to life and the marvelous prose that enriches the narrative. Then, as a major hurricane bears down on the island, inciting a riot among the insane and cutting off all access to the mainland, they begin to fear for their lives. Cawley-and pick up hints of illegal brain surgery performed at the hospital. The marshals' digging gets them nowhere fast as they learn of Rachel's apparently miraculous escape past locked doors and myriad guards, and as they encounter roadblocks and lies strewn across their path-most notably by the hospital's chief physician, the enigmatic J. marshals, protagonist Teddy Daniels and his new partner, Chuck Aule, arrive on Shutter Island, not far from Boston, to investigate the disappearance of patient Rachel Solando from the prison/hospital for the criminally insane that dominates the island. But as anyone who has read him knows, Lehane, despite his mastery of the mechanics of suspense, is about much more than twists here, he's in pursuit of the nature of self-knowledge and self-deception, and the ways in which both can be warped by violence and evil. I'm not going to actually commit suicide, but I'm going to vicariously commit suicide by handing myself over to these people who're going to lobotomise me.Know this: Lehane's new novel, his first since the highly praised and bestselling Mystic River, carries an ending so shocking yet so faithful to what has come before, that it will go down as one of the most aesthetically right resolutions ever written. Sheehan, 'I feel too guilty to go on living. ' does indeed choose his fate,' claims Professor James Gilligan of New York University, who acted as Martin Scorsese's psychiatric adviser. According to Gilligan, Teddy is effectively telling Dr. Sheehan, 'to live as a monster or to die as a good man?' Teddy chooses the later. Marshal Edward Daniels, knowing full well that he will be lobotomized. Either way, he cannot live with the pain, and chooses to go on as U.S. He also knows that, if that scenario is wrong, he killed his wife at the lake house after she drowned their three children.

Teddy does, in fact, remember that he burnt down his apartment building and killed his wife. The doctors' aggressive role play actually worked-just not in the way they had hoped.

However, what we really see transpire is Teddy choosing to be lobotomized.

Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane