A number of novels have been released as part of the Final Destination franchise.
- Dead Reckoning
- Destination Zero
- End of the Line
- Dead Man's Hand (2005)
- Looks Could Kill
- Death of the Senses
The novels
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Series-Wide
- Eldritch Abomination: Death's true form.
- Scary Black Man: If the books End of the Line and Looks Could Kill are any indication, this is Death's preferred form when interacting directly with people.
Dead Reckoning
When the nightclub that she's just been performing in collapses, killing everyone inside, Jess Golden is more than a little freaked out-she'd seen the whole thing happen in a vision only moments before. Already under suspicion from the police, Jess is implicated even further when the other survivors start dying mysteriously. As the death toll mounts a twisted plan is hatched so that Jess and her friends might live, a plan that may ultimately place them in further danger...
Enter the exhilarating world of the Los Angeles underground rock scene-Death's name isn't down but he's definitely coming in.
Tropes:
- Asshole Victim: Eric Prescott.
- Bouncer: Sebastian Lebecque. Also a Badass Biker.
- Dropped a Bridge on Him: Marina Hewlett's death is just as, if not more than, anticlimactic as Alex's: she is bitten by a spider. Her death isn't even shown in the novel; one of the survivors comes to the visionary's apartment and tells her how she died.
- Evil Elevator: Charlie's death. He seems to get the elevator that Eric screwed around with earlier working and turns and calls to the others just as he steps through the doorway, failing to notice the elevator isn't there. He falls down the shaft, but is only injured and yells up "I'll be fi-" right before the elevator comes crashing down on top of him.
- Half The Woman She Used To Be: Macy.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Nice job shooting out the lock of Club Kitty and accidentally causing the whole place to collapse, Marina. You've shown us that police really are useless.
Destination Zero
After an investigative journalist narrowly cheats death in a terrorist attack, she sees a great angle for a story by telling the survivors' tales in her magazine. When the survivors start turning up dead, though, she begins to suspect foul play and finds herself dragged into a world of spiritualism and conspiracies that ultimately leads back to Victorian England and Jack the Ripper.
If you thought you knew suspense and intrigue, then you don't know Jack!
Tropes:
- Death by Irony: Al Kinsey is decapitated while a prostitute is giving him head.
- Eye Scream: A character gets blinded by snake venom.
- Genre Roulette: The book jumps from modern horror, Gothic horror,and even a brief dip into action.
- Intercontinuity Crossover: Though never identified by name, the detective in the Victorian Britain segments is obviously Sherlock Holmes.
- Kill It with Fire: Someone gets burned alive from the inside out.
- Mistaken for Terrorist: It turns out the bombers were just criminals who wanted millions of dollars.
- No Dead Body Poops: Averted. Steward Tubbs loosens his bowels after he's autopsied alive.
- Not Quite Dead: Subverted. Stewart Tubbs was still alive, but no one realized it until after they cut him open, broke open his ribs, and pulled out his lung during the autopsy. Then he woke up, and subsequently died.
- Off with His Head!: Al Kinsey, decapitated while receiving oral sex.
- Out with a Bang: Al Kinsey loses his head while getting head.
- Serial Killer: Jack the Ripper shows up here.
- Snakes Are Evil: Three of the victims are killed by poisonous snakes.
- Super Drowning Skills: Justified. The first victim probably could swim, but his leg was broken and he was being bashed around by a motorbike underwater.
- Trailers Always Spoil: Zack Halloran's death is spoiled on the very FIRST PAGE before the actual story even begins.
End of the Line
A group of international students are expecting to live the wild life on a cultural exchange trip to New York, but soon find themselves the only survivors of a horrific subway crash. A young doctor treating the victims tells the students that they were meant to have died in the wreck but they just dismiss it as an idle fantasy. When the group start dying in bizarre and grotesque ways, it slowly becomes apparent that darker forces are at play.
Nobody rides for free and these kids are going to pay with their lives!
No one cheats Death.
Tropes:
- Chainsaw Good: Mary-Beth gets sliced apart by one that's haphazardly swinging from scaffolding.
- Eye Scream: Jack Cohen slips and falls on the ground, getting a corkscrew in his eye. Instinctively, he pulls it out, along with part of his brain.
- Human Pincushion: Bodil Raden and James Barker are impaled by umbrellas, of all things. The latter, however, had already passed out from blood loss after his arm was ripped off. Not that that's any less sadistic...
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Peter Hoffman gets impaled on gazelle horns.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Good job tampering with your brother's brakes on his motorcycle and sending him to his death, Louise.
- The Reveal: Happens twice, back to back. The first reveal is that Kate Shelley inadvertently caused the deaths of all the survivors, and that she became a servant for Death after she was resuscitated during the Sux race. The second is that Louise also became a servant for Death after Kate brought her back to life after accidentally killing her. She ends up inadvertently killing her brother.
Dead Man's Hand
When Annie Goodwin travels to the desert oasis of Las Vegas, she hopes to turn her life around for the better in the casinos. Life's dealt her a rotten hand and her current luck seems to be no different. But when Annie has a premonition of a terrible accident in which she and her husband Tom will die, she takes steps to stop it from happening. Annie, Tom and three other people survive the ordeal and cheat Death. But in a town where the odds are always in the house's favour, can Annie hope to beat the Reaper in this game when she's drawn the Dead Man's Hand?
In the glitz and glamour of Las Vegas, the Grim Reaper plays host... and his routine will slay them all!
Tropes:
- Book Ends: Whenever a survivor dies, we are given a rewrite of their introduction paragraph.
- Bring My Brown Pants: Arlen Ploog pisses his pants after he's smacked around and almost killed by a criminal.
- Dead Man's Hand: Alluded to in the title. Also shows up in the storyline.
- Death by Irony: Shawna despises big felines, yet she gets killed by a Jaguar. And no, we don't mean the cat
. - Decoy Protagonist: Aldis Escobar. The entire first chapter is dedicated to him... and he dies in a car accident on the last page of it, long before the book's disaster (the collapse of a glass elevator) even occurs.
- Downer Ending: Tom is run over by a truck, and shortly after his funeral, Annie finds out she has a malignant form of HIV.
- Evil Elevator: One of these is the opening disaster. A big glass elevator attached to the outside of "Merlin's Tower" winds up plummeting down onto the street below, killing everyone in it and some other bystanders.
- Groin Attack: One of the Necro Non Sequiturs ends with a survivor getting his penis bitten off by the prostitute who was giving him head.
Looks Could Kill
Strike a pose. It could be your last...
Working on the fiendishly clever premise that you cannot cheat Death and he will eventually catch up with you no matter what you do, the Final Destination series continues with this nerve-shredding trip into the limelight. Looks Could Kill sweeps you into the ultra-glamorous world or supermodels and fashion photographers. When an upcoming starlet is horribly disfigured trying to save her friends, she is given an unexpected second chance. All she has to do is help Death do away with her friends.
Opportunity knocks for budding young models... but Death just lets himself in.
Tropes:
- Asshole Victim: This novel takes this a step further with a group of Ungrateful Bastards who completely abandon the heroine after she's physically scarred saving everyone. She then strikes a deal with Death to help kill everyone in exchange for getting her looks back.
- Birth-Death Juxtaposition: Double Subversion. Gunter Nonhoff dies just minutes before his wife starts to have the baby. Just when Death is about claim both of them, Sherry grows a heart and leaves her room, sparing Cabernet and allowing her to have the baby.
- Child by Rape: Brut is later revealed to be this. And even worse is that he was fathered by his own grandfather.
- Deadpan Snarker: Gunter Nonhoff.
- Deal with the Devil: Sherry strikes one with Death himself; if she helps him correct the imbalance in his design by killing her friends, he will restore her beauty.
- Neck Snap: Shiraz. While on the set for a music video, her hair extensions are caught in the spinning wheels of the car she's in, nearly scalping her. When the director gets into an altercation with the set's engineer, the car's remote falls to the floor and smashes after a toolbox sends its contents flying on top of it... unfortunately, after the wheels turn back on, at high speed. Due to her hair extensions still being tangled in the wheels, this winds up twisting her head 180 degrees, killing her almost instantly.
- Parental Incest: Turns out one of the models is the offspring of a man who repeatedly raped his daughter. And that was the least of his sins.
- Redemption Equals Death: Sherry decides to spare Cabernet's life after realizing she's not a Jerkass after all. Cue incoming bus driven by Death himself one year later.
- Super Drowning Skills: Chardonnay, boiled to death in a hot tub.
- Very Loosely Based on a True Story: The father of one of the main characters was based on Ronald Simmons.
Death of the Senses
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.
Tropes:
- 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.
- Eye Scream: Chelsea gets a two-pronged icicle through both of her eyes.
- 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.
