Prayers for Rain

infobox Book |
name = Prayers for Rain
title_orig =
translator =


image_caption =
author = Dennis Lehane
cover_artist =
country = USA
language = English
series = Kenzie-Gennaro
genre = Crime fiction
publisher = Harcourt
release_date = November 1999
media_type = Print (Hardback & Paperback)
pages = 416 pp
isbn = ISBN 0380730367
preceded_by = Gone, Baby, Gone
followed_by =

"Prayers for Rain" is a crime novel written by Dennis Lehane, published in 1999. It is the fifth (and to date final) novel in the author's Kenzie-Gennaro series, focusing on private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro.

Plot summary

After the events of the preceding novel, "Gone, Baby, Gone", Patrick Kenzie is working solo; Angie Gennaro has left their partnership for employment at a large investigative firm, moving out of Dorchester and turning her back on a possible personal relationship with Kenzie.

A young woman has leapt to her death from Boston's landmark Custom House tower, and Kenzie is shocked to hear that she is one of his former clients, Karen Nichols. A dressed-for-success career woman, Nichols had hired him several months earlier to scare off a stalker she had attracted at her fitness club. An unpleasant visit from Kenzie and his explosive friend Bubba Rogowski had apparently been enough to deter the stalker, Cody Falk, an upscale predator with a long history of restraining orders.

But news of Nichols' suicide leads Kenzie to recall, with some guilt, a loose end from her case. Several weeks after he'd confronted the stalker, Nichols had left a message on his answering machine -- and he had neglected to return her call.

Stung by his former client's death, Kenzie makes a quick investigation and finds that at the time of her call, Nichols had been experiencing a suspicious run of bad luck. Her fiancé had been hit by a car and later died of the injuries; she had lost her job while caring for him; and, according to the police, the pert young client Kenzie recalled as "someone who would iron her socks" had become a strung-out prostitute working from a cheap motel. When Kenzie once again questions Falk, he discovers that the stalker had received several notes, purporting to be from Karen Nichols herself, inviting him to continue pursuing her. Horrified and fascinated, Kenzie embarks on the search for a vindictive mastermind who manipulated Falk and others in a complex scheme to destroy Nichols' life.cite web
year = 1999
title = Fall from Grace
publisher = January Magazine
accessdate = 2008-04-20
url = http://januarymagazine.com/crfiction/prayer.html]

References