Firefly Rain, by Richard Dansky
Firefly Rain is the first novel by Richard Dansky, the head writer for the Tom Clancy video games. The book follows Jacob Logan, a man originally from the town of Maryfield, NC, who moved away to pursue big city dreams in Boston. After having a successful office job, Jacob is let go and forced to return home. Both of his parents are dead and buried in the back yard, so it's just him in the house now. Carl, the man Jacob hired to look after the house while he was away, pops up every chance he gets and gets creepier and creepier. Carl mentions things like keeping a promise, and talking about the town as though it were a person. Everyone else in the town treats Jacob funny upon his return, and things are just out of whack. With a weak twist and a surprise ending, Jacob keeps a promise he made a long time ago.
Warning: Spoilers follow here.
After experiencing several odd occurrences, Jacob realizes he is being haunted by the spirits of his parents. His car gets stolen, yet he never hears anything. Doors open and close on their own. Things that were locked up in the house show up with no explanation. The fireflies that used to pepper his property in droves fall dead as they near the border of the land. After being spooked for a couple of days, Jacob calls his friend Jenna back in Boston. After telling her everything that has happened, he asks Jenna to come down and visit him. She does, and that's when things get bad for Jacob. Carl, as well as a few other members of the town, corner Jacob into the woods and tell him that he is going through all of this because he once promised his mother that he would come back, and while she was living he didn't. Carl's promise that he mentions frequently was to Jacob's mother, to bring him home and make him stay there. The house went for a long time without a Logan living in it, something that hadn't happened for the last three generations of people. Because of this, she haunts the town and keeps people that Jacob knew as a boy from dying so that they can force him to stay in town and not run off again. In order to make up for not keeping this promise, Jacob must either fall in love with Adrienne, a girl in town that would force him to stay, or kill Asa the dog, who has been terrorizing him and taken in by evil fireflies. After he tries to kill the Asa, Jenna suddenly charges out with his shotgun and shoots the dog in the head. Carl and his gang run up to the house from the woods and tell Jacob that since he wasn't technically responsible for spilling the blood, and since he refuses to be forced into love with Adrienne, Jenna must now die as she poses a threat to any relationship he could strike up with Adrienne. All the men that confronted Jacob now take turns beating him so that he can't save Jenna from them. There is a loud bang from the house as Adrienne's body floats through a window, Jacob's mother channeling her. She tells the men to stop, and after confronting Jacob about staying, he says he'll try. She finally lets the men from town rest in piece as they should have done long ago, and Jacob goes to the hospital for his wounds, returning home with a good chance for a relationship with Jenna.
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The first two-thirds of the book were great. I finished the book in two days, a new record for myself, and was sucked into it almost immediately. The way Dansky describes paranormal scenes in the house are creepy, and the scenes with the fireflies are well written, as well. But once the book got to the point where Jacob hears the dog outside and Jenna finally gets to town, the book wasn't as good anymore. I take great issue with the dog having to be killed. What did the dog do? Why not put Sam through something like the others? Was the dog sick and being kept alive as well? The book doesn't say. We never find out why there was an indention in his mother's pillow, or why she willingly let Adrienne into her bedroom when she hated her before. After so much of the book being about his stolen car and who was driving it, the driver turning out to be his dad's spirit is a cop-out, especially since his mother's spirit needed to channel a living body to communicate directly with the living. It doesn't make sense, then, that his dad could somehow materialize to drive a car or steal it silently. And why did Jacob kill the fireflies after his parents died, when he was an adult and not a little kid? He doesn't know. Wow, that's a great answer. Basically, I feel like the book promised something really big and the ending just didn't deliver. A quick, gripping read, but don't expect a stellar ending. 4/5
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For Next Time
The Postcard Killers, by James Patterson & Liza Marklund
NYPD detective Jacob Kanon is on a tour of Europe's most gorgeous
cities. But the sights aren't what draw him - he sees each museum, each
cathedral, and each café through the eyes of his daughter's' killer.
Kanon's daughter and her boyfriend were murdered while on vacation in
Rome. Since then, young couples in Paris, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, and
Stockholm have been found dead. Little connects the murders, other than a
postcard to the local newspaper that precedes each new victim. Now
Kanon teams up with the Swedish reporter Dessie Larsson, who has just
received a postcard in Stockholm - and they think they know where the
next victims will be.
-barnesandnoble.com
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