The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers

RidgewayGirl recommended this book to me and then she brought me her copy to read, so I knew she really had enjoyed it. This isn’t always a surety that I will like it, we disagree about books all the time, but we both gave this book the same rating - which is a rarity. And we both gave it five stars. That’s really, really rare. Like, planets-are-aligning rare and you should read it quickly before the world ends!

Just kidding. About the end of the world bit, that is.

Obviously from the title you know something is not quite normal, but still I credit Mullen’s gifted writing for making it so easy to roll with. I’ve always been too straight-laced to root for the criminal element. I can’t imagine giving succor to people like Bonnie show more & Clyde or Dillinger, and I was shaking my head last week at those Dougherty siblings, but I actually found myself wanting these two characters to succeed. Jason and Whit Fireson are brothers who have turned to robbing banks during the Great Depression. They’ve been killed during a shootout with police but then they wake up in the morgue. Mullen doesn’t interfere or waste time trying to explain how or why this is happening, he just lets the situation develop and it moves beautifully from there.

Pick this one up, you won’t be sorry. show less

Absolutely loved this book and was telling my friends about it when I was only a third of the way in. Mullen takes the 1930s gangster teams to a new level by turning the usual tale on its head right off the bat. Set at a time when bank robbers could just as easily be seen as hero or villain, because of all the foreclosures by the banks (sound familiar?), the Firefly Brothers' spree takes on legendary status and for darn good reasons. But...I won't spoil the fun. Suspend disbelief and take the ride with Jason and Whit; it's bumpy but you'll love the wind in your hair almost as much as Darcy did.

Along the way we're forced to think about family relationships, brother to brother, son to father, and how moral choices are made and justified. show more We also get to 'feel' the Depression from ground level. But it's actually a lot more fun than all that sounds. Heck, just read it for the romping adventure and you'll enjoy it. Come to think of it, I'm not sure I was supposed to enjoy it quite this much. 100% guarantee that there will be arguments about the ending and I look forward to that fun. I can't wait to see what Mullen writes next and what my friends have to say about this book. show less

A fun, pulpy thrill ride. I'm much more interested in noir than in the supernatural, so I was happy with the balance struck there with the plot. Apart from that recurring bit of oddness, it was your basic caper story. The characters weren't all likable, but they were consistently three-dimensional. I didn't predict everything -- some nice red herrings -- but no reveal felt like an out-of-nowhere cheat. Appreciated how the context of the Depression had some really vivid historical detail without trying to make a point. It was more people with good luck and people with bad luck than villains and victims. Mullen puts a lot of effort into his language and sometimes it gets distractingly flowery. But the upside is when he really nails a show more passage. Not necessarily a book to read when you're under stress. I tried that and actually had to set it aside for a couple months. There are sequences where you can almost feel your pulse quicken. My mother read my copy right after I finished it and we disagreed on what exactly happened in a few areas, but areas that seemed deliberately ambiguous. I didn't mind that it left things to chew over. (There was a very unrealistically-timed nap near the end that still bothers me, but my mother thought it could happen.) show less

The beauty and the horror of Thomas Mullen’s book, [The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers], rest in his refusal to answer the principal question in the reader’s mind: “Why don’t the Fireson brothers die?”

Jason and Whit Fireson, depression-era bank robbers and public enemies, wake up on a small-town coroner’s cold, metal examining table, ventilated by large caliber, fatal gunshot wounds. Neither can remember how they came to die, nor how their re-quickening took place. Over the next two weeks, the brothers retrace their steps in hopes of learning who double-crossed them. They leave bodies and pain and confusion in their wake, and they die again, and again.

Mullen’s 1930s Midwest and the people struggling to survive there, show more bear a strong resemblance to landscape and personalities of Steinbeck’s [Grapes of Wrath]. And Jason Fireson’s swagger covers a multitude of sins and an ocean of regret, making him more of a character from a Greek tragedy than one from a Jimmy Cagney or Bogart movie. For such a young author, Mullen deftly steps into one of this country’s most complex and tumultuous times, striking a careful balance between the action of a thriller and the spirit of noir. He tackles the issues of identity and self-perception with a soul older than its years.

Still, the question nags, “Why don’t they die?” I suspect that Mullen leaves the question unanswered to allow the reader room to breathe, allow for individual answers about the nature of good and evil and all the space in between.

Bottom Line: This story sneaks up on you disguised as a crime thriller, and reveals itself, by pages, as thought provoking literature.

4 ½ bones!!!!! show less

Depression-era bank robbers Jason and Whit Fireson (aka the Firefly brothers) are shot to death, but inexplicably find themselves returning to life in a police morgue hours later, with no memory of the events that lead to their deaths. It's an incredibly intriguing beginning, but unfortunately the rest of the book doesn't really live up to it. The story spends remarkably little time on the mysteries of what happened that night (which is eventually explained) and why they keep resurrecting (which really isn't). And there's very little forward momentum to the story at all for much of the novel. Instead, there's a near-endless series of flashbacks showcasing the brothers' family history, why they turned to a life of crime, how they met show more their girlfriends, etc. It's not entirely uninteresting, and eventually it pretty much all does tie in to the current-day plot, but it just doesn't meet the expectations set up by the premise; the characters simply aren't compelling enough for that. Indeed, I occasionally got the impression that Mullen might perhaps have been happier just writing a non-fiction book about the Great Depression's hard times and gangster legends, and dispensing with the story altogether.

Which isn't to say that it's a bad book. It's quite readable. There's some decent action, and some moderately interesting revelations. But I just couldn't help feeling disappointed with it. show less

I can't write a reasoned, objective review of this book because I loved it so, so much. If I were living in 1934, and the Firefly Brothers were, well, not fictional, I'd be filling scrapbooks with newspaper clippings of their exploits.

The book opens with Jason Fireson waking up in a morgue. He's pretty good at sleeping anywhere, but he's never woken up naked on a metal table before. He's also got a row of welt-like holes on his chest. It doesn't take him long to find his brother on an adjacent table, wake him up and make their escape from the police station, thanks to an all too frightened officer they find in a locker room, who seems to think that they should be dead.

The brothers can't remember anything of the last few days and so show more the book moves back and forth through time, telling the story of how they became infamous bank robbers and of what happened to them after they woke from the dead. There's a mystery here, too, of what happened to get them killed in the first place.

Mullen takes the unbelievable and weaves it with a realistic depiction of how unrelentingly difficult the depression was for millions of Americans, sending families to live in ramshackle Hoovervilles and causing men to fight for any job available. show less

When the colder, darker weather of autumn comes along, I seem to gravitate towards stories with a slightly darker feel to them, be it Gothic, noir or something a bit on the gritty side. Mullen’s Depression-era story is the perfect read to go along with rainy, wind-swept days. The title is an apt one, and provides the reader with a bit of insight into the story considering the story starts out with the Fireson brothers resurrection. One may throw their hands up in frustration at this but Mullen uses this “spoiler” of his own disclosure to build a wonderful story around the fact that the Fireson brothers have no memories of the events that lead to them “waking up” in the police morgue with their bodies altered by what looks like show more bullet holes. The story takes the reader on a Depression-era crime adventure in keeping with the myth, legend and lore of outlaw celebrities the likes of the Dillinger Gang and Bonny and Clyde. The story has everything – bank heists, bumbling cops, fedora-wearing Tommy-gun toting men, shoot-outs, a car chase, an intrepid young Bureau of Investigation agent, crooked business men and even a “damsel in distress”. While reading this one, I was able to see the story play out, like watching a flickering old black and white gangster movie.

The story has a decidedly noir feel to it, in part due to the gloomy Depression setting. Even with that gloom, the story provides glimpses of Robin Hood style flair as the Firefly Brothers become folk heroes of the destitute populous. There is a noticeable divide between the hard-core villains and the “charming gentlemen” criminals (hence that Robin Hood angle I mentioned earlier). Yes, the story has a phantasmagorical aspect to it in the resurrection of the Firefly Brothers and some of the story comes across as a bit of a cliché but, the heart of the story is really about a family (the Firesons) and the lies that people tell themselves and the people they love. The deep dive Mullen does into the past lives of his characters makes it stand out, for me anyways, from other bank heist-styled stories I have read to date. Outside of that core family piece, [The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers] is a wonderful escapism read where even the criminals are not “cut and dry” characters. As one reviewer has mentioned, “the story wonderfully illuminates why 1930’s America spawned so many dark heroes”. Everyone needs an idea or an individual to look up to, even if the attention is focused on an antihero. Under Mullen’s pen, one can easily see why antiheros can be so popular. show less