Shutter Island is a 2003 novel written by Dennis Lehane. A film adaptation of the novel, re-titled Ashecliffe and directed by Martin Scorsese, is forthcoming in 2009.

Premise

The story takes place in 1954 on Shutter Island, home to a psychiatric hospital called Ashecliffe. U.S. Marshals Teddy Daniels and Chuck Aule investigate the disappearance of a patient, Rachel Solando, who had committed multiple murders. The marshals search the island for the patient as a hurricane bears down on them, and they find that the hospital has practiced sinister measures during its existence.

Background

With Shutter Island, author Dennis Lehane sought to write a novel that would be a homage to Gothic settings, B movies, and pulp. Lehane described the novel as a hybrid of the works of the Brontë sisters and the 1956 film Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The author wanted to write the main characters in a position where they would lack twentieth-century conventions such as radio communications. He also structured the book to be more taut than his previous book, Mystic River.

Film adaptation

The novel is being adapted into a film by director Martin Scorsese, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Michelle Williams, and Mark Ruffalo. The title, Ashecliffe, refers to the hospital for the criminally insane on Shutter Island.

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