Declan Finn's Blue Saint

So, yeah...

The emotional bond between someone who absolutely loves to read and one of their favorite characters is a weird one, especially when the reader starts the series when it first comes out and has to wait for each successive book. Cracking open the new book is like having an old friend swing by for a coffee. Like, you don't necessarily get as much time as you want with them but it's still nice to find out how they've been and what they've been up to.

"Go ahead and put your feet up on the table, Favorite Character and tell me about your adventures. How have you been feeling? How has your love life been? Kids doing okay? What losses have you suffered? What victories have you scored? What are you up to now?"

I'm not saying it's normal or a sign of sanity, I'm just saying that it happens. We smile with them. We cry with them. We laugh with them. We're happy when they're with us and we're sad when they're gone. Seriously, re-reading an old book can be like flipping through a family photo album.

Which is why it can hit us so hard when they die.

And, well, I don't do spoilers, but Declan Finn's Blue Saint is the last book in a series about a saint and there is no such thing as a living saint. Therefore saying that St. Tommy survived is pretty much like spoiling a movie about the American Revolution by screaming "The Americans win!" And seriously, I'm not going to conduct this review as a requiem of the life of Thomas Nolan (who, admittedly, was a better man than I'll ever be) but I feel the need to take this time to express my sense of loss and compliment both Tommy Nolan and Declan Finn on their accomplishment: Three deaths in all of the fiction I have read have brought me to tears; Sturm Brightblade, Fred Weasley and Tommy Nolan. Yes, I'm a Potterhead. Sue me.

Also like Sturm Brightblade, Tommy at least got the send off he deserved. Fred got hosed. That makes up for a lot. No one likes to see their favorite character die and ignominious death (Grayson Carlyle anyone?) and here he didn't have to. I've not seen a finer death for a character anywhere and that's saying something.

But hold on, now. There is a WHOLE LOT more to Blue Saint than the death of one character. There is love. There is loss. There's a lot going on here. There is a scene that reminded me of my only failings(?) not because of something awesome Tommy did but because of a human moment where he questioned himself. Maybe the best thing about Detective Nolan is that he has never been the arrogant, holier than thou type. He lives, he breathes and he questions himself, just like the rest of us.

A lot of relationships in the series are highlighted here in new ways and that works for me as well. Seriously,  think about it. If you had to go into a dangerous situation, who would you want at your back? Who would you want watching your family while you were gone? Are they the same person? What if they couldn't be? Blue Saint provides some perspective on those types of questions. It also, in a way, sheds a little light on the relationships of the people around us in ways that we wouldn't necessarily consider. I find this odd for what is primarily a first-person perspective book, but it's true. Actually, looking back on it, that's true of the whole Saint Tommy, NYPD series and your goofy reviewer is just now picking up on it. 

*SIGH*

No system is perfect I guess. I'll work on it.

The one negative (ish) thing I will say is that Blue Saint is in no way a standalone novel. This is Finn's masterwork, the result of a full dozen books worth of interweaving plotlines and relationships. Blue Saint is a serious achievement in finally bringing everything back together and tying it up with a bow on the package. I'm not saying he can't top it (as a matter of fact, I'm daring him to) but it's going to take some serious work. And a new reader coming in out of the cold is not going to understand the backstory. You need to understand the backstory to get the Blue Saint story. Read the first eleven books. I did. I'm glad I did. I plan to do it again someday. And that makes me happy because, unlike the real people I've lost, St. Tommy is still there to hang out with the same way I always have.

Of course, one of the areas that Finn has always excelled in is writing action. Seriously, Finn's asskickery kicks ass and he's outdone himself once again. I love the way these fights are choreographed. Things go boom spectacularly. The use of mini-guns was awesome. The way the team in the books has adapted things like holy water and incense to fight the minions of Satan has been amazing. And, of course, Nolan's personal arsenal comes into full play in the biggest fight in the series yet. The settings for the last couple are pretty epic, too.

Due to the weird nature of the app I used to read the story (FB Reader) I almost missed the fact that there was more story after Tommy passed. It really would have sucked to have missed what came after, too, because there is a lot of good stuff there. To misquote Kid Rock: "There ain't no story like a Blue Saint story because the Blue Saint story don't stop." (Yes, English. Don't tell me, tell Kid Rock.)

I'm not going to give up the end of the story, but I will say this: The mark of a terrific author, or any type of artist for that matter, is their ability to get an emotional reaction from their audience, whoever that may happen to be. Finn took me from crying to laughing in the last few pages of his book. There aren't many authors who could do that. Go buy the book. Then read the book. Then tell me how right I was because I AM right this time. And someone make the damn movie already.

Bottom Line: 5.0 out of 5 Sappy Reviewers and my next years Dragon Award Nomination

Blue Saint (St. Tommy NYPD Book 12)
Declan Finn
Tuscany Bay Press, 2022

Blue Saint (St. Tommy NYPD Book 12) is available for purchase at the following link. If you click the link and get literally anything from Amazon I get a small percentage at no additional cost to you