- Mass Market Paperback: 416 pages
- Publisher: Harper; Reissue edition (April 13 2000)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0380730367
- ISBN-13: 978-0380730360
- Product Dimensions: 17.2 x 10.7 x 3.1 cm
- Shipping Weight: 204 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (137 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #115,285 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon.com
Prayers for Rain is Dennis Lehane's fifth installment in his intricately plotted, beautifully written, and much underacknowledged Boston mystery series. Lehane's books reflect our morally complex times, when the borders between right and wrong are somewhat blurry.
Private investigator Patrick Kenzie is in the middle of a personal crisis--he's lost his passion for the profession, and is tired of people with their "predictable vices, their predictable needs and wants and dormant desires." Angie Gennaro, his occasional sweetheart, lifelong friend, and fellow investigator has quit the business. She's still deeply resentful about Patrick's handling of the Amanda McCready case, the focus of Gone, Baby, Gone. Without Angie, private investigating has lost its fizz.
The suicide of a former client, Karen Nichols, gives Kenzie his investigative itch back. Six months earlier, Kenzie tracked down a stalker who had been harassing Nichols, and put an end to his heinous hobby. But Nichols needed more help than this PI could ever have imagined. "She'd been drowning, and I'd been busy." The successful, middle-class young woman had been sinking into a sea of drugs, alcohol, and prostitution, hitting the bottom when she jumped from the Boston Custom House. Her death consumes Kenzie--he is convinced that someone pulled her into the vortex, although her nearest and dearest simply call her weak.
Kenzie teams up with his explosive, loving, gun-toting friend Bubba Rogowski, and, after a boozy reunion, Angie Gennaro joins them. This fearless threesome must surely be the most original team in contemporary crime fiction. Good at the core--but seriously screwed up by various demons from their pasts--tact and decorum is hardly their style. They work their way across Boston, doing whatever it takes to question Nichols's family and acquaintances. By unveiling the real Nichols, tragic family secrets, betrayals, and conspiracies are also unmasked.
If you haven't experienced Dennis Lehane's world before, be prepared for an invigorating new reading experience. --Naomi Gesinger --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Publishers Weekly
After the shattering consequences of their last case (Gone, Baby, Gone), Lehane's PI partners Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro are back, but not together. Estranged from Angie personally and professionally, Patrick works the old Boston neighborhoodAwith the occasional help of his loyal and happily homicidal pal Bubba RogowskiAwhile Angie has moved uptown to a blue-chip corporate security firm. Enter Karen Nichols, a nice, hard-working sort who's being stalked. Patrick and Bubba are glad to take care of the stalkerAin an extremely satisfying wayAand everybody expects a happy ending. Which no one gets, because six months later the woman dives to her death off the Custom House tower. It turns out that everything that could go wrong with her life didAall at the same time. Everyone, including the policeAand Karen's strangely unsympathetic familyAchalks it up to a streak of extraordinarily bad luck, but Patrick is suspicious. He doesn't believe in coincidences and needs Angie's help to uncover a killer whose methods seem to put him beyond the lawAone who makes his victims do the work, by manipulating their minds and lives until suicide seems a plausible alternative. Lehane's sense of place is acute, and his ear is finely attuned to the voices of Boston's many neighborhoods, as Patrick and Angie trace Karen's downward spiral, from the exclusive, cobbled streets of Beacon Hill to the wharves and bars of the North End. As the plot twists through layers of old deceit and current corruption, the victims multiply while the killer remains elusive, protected by the terror he inspires. With sharp dialogue, inventively gruesome violence and the darkest of dark humor, Lehane's fifth novel proves again that he's the hippest heir of Hammett and Chandler. Author tour.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
The first time I met Karen Nichols, she struck me as the kind of woman who ironed her socks. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
The first time I met Karen Nichols, she struck me as the kind of woman who ironed her socks. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Twisted and Compelling,
By
This review is from: Prayers For Rain (Mass Market Paperback)
This was my first venture w/this series by the author and I might have benefitted from reading the four previous novels involving Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro as some of the interplay between them alluded to previous matters. My first Lehane experience was Mystic River which, in my opinion, is a stand alone classic. This is a different breed of cat, but an interesting one, nonetheless.Kenzie has helped a young woman who claimed that a man from her gym was stalking her and that he had in fact trashed her car. This matter is easily set right by Kenzie and his side-kick and protector, Bubba Rogowski. A few months later the young lady jumps naked from the 24th story of the Custom House Tower in Boston. Kenzie feels some moral responsibility to look in to the matter as he had neglected to return a call from the woman before heading of to Bermuda with a tempoary romantic interest and when he got back he had forgotten to call. His looking into the matter sets him on a chilling course of events which are better read than described here. Kenzie/Gennaro/Rodowski make a formidable and somewhat entertaining team, although some of the diologue and situations strain credulity a bit. All in all, a read that you will enjoy and be reluctant to put down until the rather twisted ending is revealed.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Prayers for Rain,
By
This review is from: Prayers For Rain (Mass Market Paperback)
The only thing I can say about Dennis Lehane is: "When's the next one going to print?" For myself, I thought 'Prayers' dialogue was a bit snappier, more colorful, than the others but that's me. One of the many things I enjoy about Lehane's writing is that he puts as much effort into the last ten pages as he did the first ten. In detective and mystery stories, that's rare indeed.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Funny and Original Crime Novel,
By Veronica (England) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Prayers For Rain (Mass Market Paperback)
It was startling to read this book because Dennis Lehane's writing style is so distinctly unique and engrossing. I was drawn into the story from the start because the narrative was funny, smart and original. I particularly enjoyed the descriptions of the characters which made them come alive on the page which is a real accomplishment for any writer.The plot was intriguing and compelling and I somehow ended up reading the whole book in the space of one day (and most of the night!). I had never read a Kenzie / Gennaro / Rogowski crime novel before and so I was new to the characters, but they all seemed to me to be very well developed and interesting. I even liked the fact that Bubba was more like a superhero than a real life human being. However, I was shocked by some of the things that the lead characters did, for example, arranging for criminals to be beaten up severely and other shady dealings which made me a bit uncomfortable. Overall Prayers For Rain was a great introduction for me into this series. The excellent humour was a real surprise and definitely made me read on and there was a satisfying twist at the end. The twists and turns of the plot were entertaining and the action scenes were described really well. I'll certainly be checking out other Lehane books in the future. Highly Recommended. JoAnne
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