Mystic+River+Meeting+3

Roles:

Discussion Leader: Catherine Summary: Stevie Questions: Jane

The ending of this book is completely unexpected and will throw anybody off who thought they had an idea of how the book would end. We really couldn't decide what surprised us the most, was it the brutality of Katie's death? After being shot and bashed to death. Jimmy finds out about Katie's death when she doesn't go to work the next morning. The death of his daughter completely turns Jimmy's life upside down. After this happens, the books turns to Daves point of view, which is when he gets home. He returns to his wife and has a large cut across his chest, an injured hand, and his bleeding profusely. This really makes all of us consider Dave as the murderer of Katie. All three of us agree that it was too obvious that Dave would have been the murderer. The murderer actually is Ray Harris. It was was also suspected that the murderer could have been Katie's boyfriend Brendan Harris, but realistically it was his little brother. As readers, we also suspected it could have been Mr. Harris because he had a bad past with Jimmy. Ray Harris found his dad's gun, and his friends and him wanted to start talk around town so they were pointing their gun at drivers who drove past. When Katie crashed the car from seeing the gun, it was mainly out of fright. The boys went to go see if she was okay, and the gun went off. Katie was shot, but not killed. Later on, she ran into the park, but the boys followed her in fear that they would get in trouble, so they killed her so she couldn't tell on them. Another unexpected series of events that occurred was that Jimmy killed Dave, because he assumed that Dave was the murderer. We all agreed that the most interesting part was before Jimmy killed Dave, Jimmy told him if he admits that he killed his daughter he won't kill him. Dave admitted it, in efforts to save his life, but JImmy shoots him anyway. The end was open to interpretation, we all are curious if Sean ends up arresting Jimmy.
 * Summary:**


 * Questions**

Throughout the book, what character changed the most? I think Sean changed the most because although, the book started off with him being the trouble maker of his "group", and had a desire to steal car's and all, he ended up becoming a cop.

What does Dave being raped as a child have to do with turn out event? I think him being raped as a child made him go a little crazy. He makes huge cut across his chest, insures his own hand and bleed profusely, which made the readers think that he might be responsible to Katie's murder, but throughout the book, we find out that he was not related.

What role did Jimmy have have in his daughter's death? He doesn't take the major role in Katie's death but her death caused him to shoots his old good friend, Dave.

How did you think the book would end? I kind of expected something crazy was going to happen, but I thought it would involve one of three main characters.