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A review by bryce_is_a_librarian
Prayers for Rain by Dennis Lehane
4.0
And so we come to the end... I'm going to miss Kenzie and Gennaro I've been putting off this book for awhile, but well I had a train to ride and it was just staring at me.
Prayer's For Rain isn't their best outing but you can't say the crew doesn't go out with a bang.
Say this for Lehane he writes a good villain. He creates antagonists that you don't want to so much see beaten, as destroyed utterly. A good Lehane villain simply angrys up the blood in a real primal way.
So color me surprised that Lehane drops the ball just a little bit. The first two thirds of the novel are terrifying. Whether manipulating third parties into doing his dirty work, destroying the innocent for the fun of it, or leading poor Kenzie on a literal game of cat and mouse. The character is a formidable and terrifying oppenent, and that's before it's revealed he knows Kung Fu.
But then a strange thing happens in the home stretch when he suddenly turns into a total pussy once a bit of his mysteries taken away. Then his master plan is revealed and it's the definition of underwhelming (Imagine someone ransoming Los Angeles with an A-Bomb so he can get a free stick of chewing gum) Then there's the thunderingly obvious, utterly annoying "twist". It's frustrating because what you have is a five star book for most of it's page count, which completely fumbles in the home stretch.
Still the gang's all here which is always fun to see. And even if this is the last book about my favorite pair of Boston mugs, at least Lehane has left them in a pretty good place.
Prayer's For Rain isn't their best outing but you can't say the crew doesn't go out with a bang.
Say this for Lehane he writes a good villain. He creates antagonists that you don't want to so much see beaten, as destroyed utterly. A good Lehane villain simply angrys up the blood in a real primal way.
So color me surprised that Lehane drops the ball just a little bit. The first two thirds of the novel are terrifying. Whether manipulating third parties into doing his dirty work, destroying the innocent for the fun of it, or leading poor Kenzie on a literal game of cat and mouse. The character is a formidable and terrifying oppenent, and that's before it's revealed he knows Kung Fu.
But then a strange thing happens in the home stretch when he suddenly turns into a total pussy once a bit of his mysteries taken away. Then his master plan is revealed and it's the definition of underwhelming (Imagine someone ransoming Los Angeles with an A-Bomb so he can get a free stick of chewing gum) Then there's the thunderingly obvious, utterly annoying "twist". It's frustrating because what you have is a five star book for most of it's page count, which completely fumbles in the home stretch.
Still the gang's all here which is always fun to see. And even if this is the last book about my favorite pair of Boston mugs, at least Lehane has left them in a pretty good place.