Lay Saints [NOOK Book]

Once again Adam Connell writes a book with such strong female ch

Once again Adam Connell writes a book with such strong female characters. Just like he did, and admirably, in Counterfeit Kings. Connell, a male writer, creates for us bold female characters that are often seen in fantasy but too rarely in sci-fi.

The women in Lay Saints (most notably Tamm and Emmie and Beryl) they are just so real, so fully realized on the page that they leap into your imagination. (And if you have a very strong imagination, like I do, these women stay with you long after you have finished the book.)

It is no easy trick, what Connell has done. The women in Lay Saints are not placeholders, they are not props, they are important to the plot. He has given us women we can cheer for and cry with. Bravo, Adam. The second time in two books--Bravo.

3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

Best Dialogue Writer in SF

You gotta love a book driven by its dialogue. Elmore Leonard, George V. Higgins, Donald E. Westlake. Well Adam Connell is their science fiction equivalent. The conversations and confrontations in Lay Saints are sharp, wicked, original, fun, and dangerous.

There is a casual but complex rhythm to the way his people speak, and speak to each other. It was like I was eavesdropping. And in a way I was. Isn't all the best fiction this way?

3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

Lay Saints is an utter surprise. I’m a Sci-Fi guy usually,

Lay Saints is an utter surprise. I’m a Sci-Fi guy usually, but this book merges that genre with a sort of crime noir sensibility- Just think of the guys in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction with psychic powers.

That is the sheer joy of Lay Saints- flawed, funny tough guys using their powers of psychic persuasion to complete illegal contracts for their clients.

Of particular note are the twin psychics, Piker and Attila. They use their powers in tandem, live in a single, furnished room together and share one girlfriend between them. They are the highlight of the novel, just because they are so realistically drawn- they are childlike and malevolent, ambitious and hilarious all at the same time. They use their combined powers to give a man a stroke and then, both unsure of the breadth of crime forensics, argue about whether or not they need to hide the shovel used to bury him. Insecure about their boss’s need for them, they endlessly threaten and attack the new guy, Calder. They want to get rid of the competition. They want job security. Don’t we all?

This is why everyone in this novel is so realistic. They make mistakes, sometimes stupid, but always ones that a real working person might make. Under stress, we all make questionable decisions and just like Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, the most obvious errors are committed in the heat of the moment, even though in hindsight everyone knew better.

Briggs and Lundin are a team working for the other side (there are two crews working out of NYC, both competing for lucrative contracts). Lundin is a powerful psychic and Briggs is his non-powered, ex-priest, hitman partner. They banter as they work jobs, worry about whether their boss likes them and philosophize endlessly about Lundin’s sexual proclivities and Briggs’s lapsed faith as they sit in a car during stakeouts.

Just like the best vintage Stephen King, Connell sets up all his characters like the most realistic army men on a huge playset and then expertly knocks them off in fantastic, heartbreaking and always surprising ways. The second half of the novel rushes forward like a freight train and I found myself muttering aloud at certain deaths, “I can’t believe he killed him.”

Recommended. At $5- it's a steal.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

Darkly Humorous

If you love black humor, you'll love Lay Saints, no doubt. I 'm not talking about SF where you laugh out loud when you shouldn't because the writings so bad.

No, Lay Saints is the opposite. You laugh out loud in certain spots because you should, you were meant to, there's black humor interspersed throughout. You might feel guilt laughing at these parts but they are very funny AND WERE MEANT TO BE. How many SF books can you say that about. The Kreenie

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

The Best Novel Of Telepaths Ever Written, Seriously Sure there

The Best Novel Of Telepaths Ever Written, Seriously

Sure there is Slan, The Chrysalids, The Demolished Man, Dying Inside. Adam Connell's Lay Saints beats these dated classics into the ground.

Now I like books about telepaths. I get really excited with books about TP, but most let me down. Lay Saints did not let me down, it blew me away. Connell cleverly executes the sensation, the feeling of following two crews of TPs around NYC, and he executes it brilliantly. You really feel like you're there, listening in while they listen in. It's a remarkable feat, what Connell has pulled off here.

Anyone who's a fan of psionics simply must read Lay Saints because it was written for them. Period.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

Frankly, I don't read a lot of SciFi. I find it to be a genre t

Frankly, I don't read a lot of SciFi. I find it to be a genre that produces books that are unnecessarily complex that they become boring, or so poorly written that they bore me from the start.
A close friend, who knows my tastes, seriously recommended that I read Lay Saints. Since then, I have thanked him, and if you read Lay Saints in part because of this review, you should thank me. You're welcome.
I am even less interested in telepaths (what I would call "mind readers"). But Connell had me hooked from page one, doling out marvelously conflicted acharacters, an ingenious plot involving NYC politics and tension alongside thrills.
I stop reading a lot of books because I have a low threshold for garbage. Lay Saints is a gem.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

Unreliable Narrator? What I loved the most about Lay Saints - a

Unreliable Narrator?
What I loved the most about Lay Saints - and there is a lot to love - was its narrator. He is only know as "Big Sir." Listen to this, he's a telepath AND a remote viewer and Connell making him so was genius. Big Sir tells the story but he steps in and out of the narrative thread, offering interjecrtions that are by turns snide, poignant, or hilariously droll. Lay Saints is told in Big Sir's biased voice, and what a potent voice it is. He is part of the story and also apart from the story. Again, genius on Connell's part. Why hasn't he published more books? MORE BOOKS, I want MORE BOOKS from this writer, Adam Connell.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

I got this through LibraryThing Member Giveaways. It was a good

I got this through LibraryThing Member Giveaways. It was a good read and a good story, though a little longer than it needed to be. This is a tale of criminal telepaths working in levels of a mob-like organization peddling their skills to the highest or most influential bidder. 
Into this world is drawn Calder, a telepath who normally uses his talents to help grieving families in hospitals albeit for a profit. He is recruited into one of two 'families' of these mind readers and used to influence a vote. 
It took some time to get into this as it is written in it own New York boroughs flavored language which seems to come and go. The narrator is not always reliable nor can we always tell from the writing it is him narrating. The story moves along well enough with some interesting unsavory characters and a decent moral dilemna but doesn't resolve itself satisfactorily in my opinion. 
An unusual take on a telepath story.

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