Final Destination: Death of the Senses is a novel by Andy McDermott, released and then pulled by Black Flame in 2006. It was, due to a printing error, only available for a short period of time before being recalled, leaving only a few copies in circulation.
When Jack Curtis has a horrific vision one snowy night, his actions save the life of young policewoman Amy Tom from a brutal psychopath and more people besides. However, the man was supposed to have embarked on a deranged killing spree and now Death is several bodies short. As Death begins to balance his books, Jack and Amy must race to warn all of the intended victims before Death collects his due.
Death of the Senses contains tropes such as:
- An Arm and a Leg: In Jack's premonition, he witnesses, amongst other victims, a woman with her hands having been cut off. This turns out to be Katie Astin, a former child star and televangelist who represents touch.
- Asshole Victim: In very stark contrast to most of the Final Destination franchise, mostly subverted as most of the victims are actually kind, sympathetic and genuinely caring, or at least have some compelling Hidden Depths, but there's still a few, such as the callous and selfish reporter, Chelsea Cox, Dawson Donahue, who runs the city's garbage disposal, but very poorly and consistently treats the protagonists like shit even as they try to save him, and Celebrity Chef Dominique Swann, who refuses to believe any of the other characters about how much her life is danger until she nearly dies and they barely save her, not that that is enough to take her off death's list.
- Downer Ending: Jack and Amy fail to save the killer's supposed victims, and after Amy herself gets impaled on a statue, Jack is shot dead by her partner, mistaking him for a murderer.
- Ear Ache: Jack's vision involves seeing a man getting his ear sliced off with a razor. The man in question, Joshua, or "Masta Thug", a rapper who represents hearing, has his ears cut in half when his platinum record is launched at him at high velocity, but it also chops the rest of his head off from the jaw up, so it's likely he hardly even felt any ear pain before dying.
- Eye Scream: Jack sees a woman with her eyes gouged out in his vision. This turns out to be Chelsea, a reporter who represents sight, and who dies "properly" by getting a two-pronged icicle through both of her eyes.
- Nasal Trauma: Amongst the victims Jack sees during his vision is a man with his nose cut off. Dawson Donahue, a businessman who runs the city's garbage disposal, who represents smell, ironically doesn't have this as part of his eventual fate. He does smell a gas leak, but his face otherwise remains unharmed when he dies, as he's done in by his car being launched towards him from the exploding engine and smashing his ribs and spine against a wall.
- Rabid Cop: Amy's partner on the force, Pete Beriev, meets Jack by initially mistaking him for being the one to attack his partner, and he only gets more and more nasty and unjustifiable as the story goes on, even gossiping about Amy working together with and temporarily letting Jack live with her to the others at their precinct. This winds up being the final straw for her and Amy tells him straight up she'll be getting a new partner if/when she ever returns to the force because she can't trust him anymore. Then he solidifies himself being a rabid cop by murdering Jack at the end of the book because he assumed he was attacking Amy again.
- Relationship Upgrade: Jack and Amy eventually decide to become a full couple, although they sure take their sweet time getting there.
- Serial Killer: Instead of a large-scale disaster, the book takes the arguably more interesting route of having the visionary kill a would-be serial killer who had intended to murder several people, who the main character must now desperately track down as Death starts working down the dead lunatic's hit list.
- Tongue Trauma: Jack sees a woman screaming with a mouth full of blood and no tongue during his vision. This is revealed to be Dominique, a snobby celebrity chef who represents taste, who dies when a shard of glass launched into her mouth from an exploding wine bottle, on top of shredding her mouth and throat, cuts off a majority of her tongue.
