"Shutter Island" is a novel by American author Dennis Lehane, published by HarperCollins in 2003.
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The book follows the story of U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels, who investigates the
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disappearance of a patient from a hospital for the criminally insane on an isolated island.
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Teddy is joined by his new partner, Chuck Aule, on the investigation.
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The hospital and island were modeled after the Long Island Hospital and grounds in Boston Harbor, which Lehane visited during the Blizzard of 1978 as a child.
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Lehane aimed to write a novel that paid homage to Gothic settings, B movies, and pulp,
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and is a hybrid of the works of the Brontë sisters and the 1956 film Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
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The novel features graphic descriptions of World War II and Dachau, which Teddy helped to liberate.
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A film adaptation of the novel, directed by Martin Scorsese and adapted by Laeta Kalogridis, was released in 2010.
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Teddy discovers a code in the room of the missing patient that he believes points to a 67th patient, despite records showing only 66.
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Teddy also seeks to avenge the death of his wife, who was murdered by a man named Andrew Laeddis, whom he believes is an inmate in the hospital.
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The ending reveals that Teddy is actually Andrew Laeddis and that the events on the
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island were an elaborate treatment to confront the truth about his wife's murder, leading
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to his acceptance of his actions and a lobotomy to avoid living with the knowledge.
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"Shutter Island" is structured to be "more taut" than Lehane's previous book, "Mystic River".