Hell Spawn by Declan Finn

My name is Officer Thomas Nolan, and I am a saint. I can smell evil. I show mercy to the lesser criminals - the desperate. Even those I’ve put behind bars seem to like me. But now there’s a serial killer bringing darkness beyond imagination to my city. I can smell his stench a mile away. But how can I prove it? How do you do forensics on a killer possessed by a demon?

This is an action thriller in the style of the Dungeon Crawler Carl and Joe Ledger series. Straight forward and no fancy writing while blending honorable intentions with graphic violence usually against monsters. The good are very good and the evil are very evil. They can often be heavy handed. They're not the kind of book you brag about reading like you do Dickens, but you can't stop because they're like popcorn. This one is a Catholic action horror novel.

In this series, Detective Tom Nolan discovers that he can bilocate, smell evil, and is open enough to God's grace to becoming a saint. A saintly warrior, in fact, who is trying to stop a demon-possessed serial killer who has targeted his family and friends. He becomes a Catholic army of one battling the legions of Hell.

The Saint Tommy series is one that will appeal to a very specific audience. Catholic. Especially Catholics who believe in what the Church teaches 100%. So that means conservative Catholics. Lucky for me, I'm one of that crowd! I don't think you have to be Catholic to enjoy it but it will certainly help get some of the jokes.

When Detective Nolan discovers he wasn't killed because a pyx stopped the bullet, you give a little chuckle. When he wants an educated priest and goes to his pal Father Freeman because he's a Dominican (and specifically not a Jesuit), there's that chuckle again.

This story surprised me because the horrific way a serial killer is treating the victims' bodies points back to something that is hidden from the general public in many ways. And which they might not think of as being horrific in the original usage, depending on their political and moral stances. It was a clever way to bring a pointed message home.

The fight sequences are over the top and get increasingly long as the book goes on. However, I really enjoyed the way the Rikers fight action was interspersed with lines of the rite of exorcism. This gave extra meaning to the point and power of those prayers. I have gone on to read more of the series and this often is done with lines of psalms in those books. It gives me a sense of what the psalmist had experienced and was expressing in a way that made the lines very vivid.

Also, I was impressed by Nolan's continual insistence that he is achieving nothing on his own, that he is doing God's will and only by God's grace will anything be accomplished. That also resonated.

I don't care for the way that political broad brushes are applied to certain groups. This becomes even more pointed as the series continues. But I've put up with a number of other series applying similar broad brushes in the other direction so, as I've done with those, I shrug it off and go on.

Surprisingly, this book stuck with me in a way that has affected my faith life as I mentioned above. It's not bad to have that as the takeaway!