Bookstooge
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Title: Hell Spawn
Series: Saint Tommy, NYPD #1
Author: Declan Finn
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Pages: 206
Words: 59K
Synopsis:
Tommy Nolan is a detective in New York City. With his wife and young son, Tommy lives within walking distance of his precinct offices. One day Tommy begins to experience some strange things, things he can't really explain. But that all is washed away when a little girl is murdered right in Tommy's neighborhood and the killer leaves a personal message for Tommy written in the girl's blood. Then one of Tommy's neighbors is murdered in the same fashion. The problem is, Tommy had talked to her on the phone, long after it was possible for her to be alive.
Turn's out there's a demon loose in New York City and it has teamed up with a psycho killer who is a discredited medical doctor. Discredited because he experimented on live victims without their consent. Tommy manages to put the perp in jail but the demon's name is Legion and takes over many of the inmates and causes a riot that even the SWAT can't put down. Possessed men aren't too worried about a few paltry bullets or tear gas after all.
Tommy, after getting some backup from his local priest and all the surrounding priests, heads into the prison to confront the demon and exorcise it. He's a man on a mission from God and begins to experience the powers that Saints throughout history have been recorded as having.
Exorcising the demon gets the prison under control, but Tommy's life is forever changed as the demon reveals that Tommy has been chosen to be the Patron Saint of Detectives. While this situation has been dealt with, Tommy knows that a righteous man's work isn't finished while he has breath in his body.
My Thoughts:
First things first. On Amazon, right in the title, this bills itself as “A Catholic Action Horror Novel”. It certainly is. Considering how other urban fantasy series shove paganism down their readers' throats without a second thought, I don't see that being a problem though. Unless you're a religious bigot that is.
Now, was that a great opening paragraph or what? I was aiming for abrasive and since I bristled at myself when I read it out loud to see how it sounded, I knew I had succeeded. But seriously folks, if you can deal with Dresden or the Iron Druid Chronicles or Jayne Yellowrock or that author Jim Hines, well, you should have zero problems with the views put forth here. Especially if you espouse tolerance as the mainstay of your beliefs.
I enjoyed this a lot. While I have my issues with specific doctrines of Catholicism and even with the whole “Saints” thing, thinking of this as a supernaturally powered cop worked just fine. And it helped that Tommy had to obey some really strict rules that had 1000's of years of history behind them. Every ability exhibited was one that previous saints had shown, so Tommy isn't simply pulling power out of his butt. The internal consistency was refreshing. Too many times the rules of urban fantasy seem to get made up as the author goes along, or to not really have any rules beyond “it's supernatural, we just don't understand”. While the rules are being revealed to us as readers, they have a deep and abiding history backing them up.
One word of caution however. This is graphic in terms of violence. Finn doesn't shy away from describing in detail just how the demon possessed man kills his victims. It is really horrific. What is even more horrific is when it is revealed what those killings are based on in real life.
Another thing I did like was the whole family dynamic. Tommy and his wife aren't having drama to ratchet up the tension. She's the wife of a cop and knows what that entails. Tommy is teaching his son krav maga so he can defend himself and to help others who are being bullied. His son isn't a psycho emo goth whatever who Tommy is trying to “connect” with. Tommy is being the dad that every dad should be. It was just great to see a main character being in a stable family. They helped each other instead of draining each other.
Overall, I was very pleased with this read and am looking forward to more in the series. I believe there are currently 7. I know that Finn has also authored several other series. One of them falls squarely into the paranormal romance category though, so even if it too gets the “A Catholic Action Horror Novel” I'll be avoiding it like the plague.
★★★★☆