A violent patient is missing from the "hospital for the insane" on Shutter Island. US Marshall Teddy Daniels, along with his partner Chuck Aule, goes to the island to search for the patient and return her to the hospital. Daniels has a traumatic personal past which he doesn't like to discuss, as well as PTSD from his WWII service. On the island, it is almost impossible to distinguish truth from fiction as Daniels tries to interview patients; and he struggles with trusting the physicians, suspecting that there is much more going on below the surface on Shutter Island. In the meantime, a powerful hurricane is barreling toward the island, endangering everyone's safety.

Shutter Island is set in the early 1950s, in the postwar era following revelations of Nazi experimentation and abuses. Hospitals for the "criminally insane" were terrifying places where patients could be imprisoned, medicated or operated on against their will. Frontal lobotomies were still legally being performed. Little was understood about serious mental illness and society struggled with managing the deluge of people suffering from the traumatic experiences of wartime.

The thriller unfolds against this backdrop, with the reader trying to discern between reality and the fictions created by the diseased minds on the island. Daniels is a very complicated character - a man of strict discipline and impossibly high moral codes, trained to be violent and yet so sadly damaged by his experiences. The atmosphere is menacing, as we follow the mystery with Teddy Daniels and regard everyone with mistrust and suspicion.

I loved this tense and twisty thriller and would highly recommend it to any fan of psychological suspense.