This is a big week for literary movie mysteries set on Massachusetts islands. If you don't want to be creeped out by "Shutter Island," Martin Scorcese's take on the criminally insane in Boston Harbor, try "The Ghost Writer." It's fugitive director Roman Polanski's adaptation of "The Ghost," a novel by British thrill-writer Robert Harris set on Martha's Vineyard. The plot: A ghostwriter, hired to finish the memoir of a former British prime minister, finds evidence linking the politician to war crimes. Here are excerpts from reviews of the movie, which had its weekend debut at the Berlin Film Festival:

Los Angeles Times -- These people not only act beautifully, they all work in concert with the director toward creating the across-the-board mood of nagging unease, of nefarious doings just outside our line of sight, that has always been one of Polanski's strengths.

New York Times -- Mr. Polanski is a master of menace and, working with a striking wintry palette that at times veers into the near-monochromatic — the blacks are strong and inky, the churning ocean the color of lead — he creates a wholly believable world rich in strange contradictions and ominous implications.

Wall Street Journal -- Mr. Polanski is a magician, his movie a synthesis of Mr. Harris's sturdy narrative, a Mamet-like appreciation for the shadows that lurk between words, and a drollery that most directors wouldn't even think about attaching to a thriller.

Variety -- All the ingredients are here for a rip-roaring political thriller, with corruption in the highest places and a cast of sexy and/or suspicious characters, but for the first hour there's little accumulated atmosphere or any sense of a bigger story hiding in the wings. Polanski simply transfers Harris' undistinguished prose direct to the screen and, though the pace picks up marginally in the second half, there's little wow factor in the revelations as they appear.