Customer Reviews

The Patron Saint of Desperate Situations

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The mystery of John Harrigan's new book is intriguing, gripping and meant to be read straight through. The intimate detail of its setting in Minnesota is fun to relate to. But the true charm of The Patron Saint of Desperate Situations is the insights it provides into the life and drama of Jake, a recovering alcoholic, and Sonia, a determined Brazilian woman and die-hard fan of Paul Wellstone.

I can not attest to the accuracy of Harrigan's portrayal of Jake because I have never lived that drama. But Harrigan's detailed characterization of Sonia as a Brazilian woman making her life in Minnesota is spot on. He truly captures many aspects of the Brazilian spirit, expressions and difficulties relating to Minnesotans. I could see a lot of my wife, a wonderful Brazilian woman who moved to Minnesota with me, in the character of Sonia. I could not stop smiling.

Read the book! It is a most enjoyable and revealing read.

Jeffrey Hanson

Disclaimer - I received a copy from the author who asked for a review (thanks, John). Reading is a holistic experience encompassing elements like title, cover, font, characters, plot, mood, language and dislogue. In this case I mentally gave an A+ to the title (perfect) but an F to the cover. It shrieks "Harlequin", a put off for many readers. Then there is the plot - can it capture the attention of the average reader? In this case, the answer would have to be "No".

A Google search on "Wellstone murder" got 118,000 hits. In Conpiracy Land, assassination chatter is downright normal with residents firmly convinced ("inside sources...") that evildoers caused the accident by a host of nefarious means - EMP, long-range sensors, inside payoffs. The problem is that outside Minnesota he was unknown. His legacy is (sadly) that tacky funeral cum political rally. He waxed more Populist than hard Leftist and his colleagues put up with his pantry of unpopular causes, humorously suggesting they were as much a matter of publicity as conviction.

Anyhoo, his plane crashed and Sonia, our Brazilian bombshell, is convinced that it was an iside job after overhearing comments by a business man. Caricature is a hallmark of mysteries (we like regularity) so there's the evil rich guy, the liberal crusader, the noble foreign outsider with a handicapped child, the befuddled male who is drawn in despite himself, the odl friend who betrays, etc. Some romantic actions made no sense - Sonia's anger at her rescue (twice) because our hero shot someone. Why leave him now after danger has passed? And worse, why return at the end so that we could have a "and they all lived happily ever after" conclusion?

The twin tales never really merged. A quirky investigation into a possible assassination would have been a good thriler on its own. So would a story about stopping a powerful businessman and his machinations to develop virgin land for greedy purposes. Their linkage was tenuous at best and seemed forced. The other problem was authenticity - parts of the story (the Minnesota parts) rang true, others sounded like classic Novelese, that filler language seen in mysteries. The second half was a huge improvment with the chase scenes, romance, final confrontation and at last, the discovery of the REAL secret. At the end, all the characters recede into the background, forgotten, except for the young boy. Rodrigo's childlike innocence remains with the reader, haunting, asking for more.

John Harrigan was one of my political science professors at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. I read many of John's text books and articles. When he told me about his fiction project, I was intrigued. I bought John's book and read it over the Columbus Day weekend. What a treat. As with Garrison Keillor and David McCollough, I heard John's voice as I read the book. The twists and turns of the plot kept me at edge as I couldn't put the book down. I even imagined a movie along the same lines as a Grisham novel. I cannot wait to read another of John Harrigan's novels. Great job, John!

Noted professor John Harrigan has crafted a stunning debut mystery entitled The Patron Saint of Desperate Situations. Harrigan's storyline centers around Sonia, a single mother from Brazil, and Jake, a recovering alcoholic, who become entangled with criminals in Minnesota. The novel deals with sophisticated cultural issues and is anchored by a realistic crime story. The ambience of Minnesota is captured with precision, and romance also plays a major part in the story. The Patron Saint of Desperate Situations is an excellent read, and I recommend it highly.

It is with great pleasure that I finished reading John Harrigan's The Patron Saint of Desperate Situations with a huge smile on my face. The book had me on the edge of my seat. I simply could not put it down. Patron Saint marks the arrival of a bright new voice in suspense fiction.

Sonia and Jake meet by chance. They have no idea that their lives are entertwined in a way neither of them can control. As they both realise the kind of problem they are in, their desperate situations only seem to get heavier and heavier, to the point where they soon become the suspects of a murder investigation.

The thing to appreciate about this novel is how vivid and real the characters are. Sonia is flawed and so real she nearly crawls out of the page. Harrigan also has a great voice when it comes to writing dialogue. It is very real, very engaging.

Although I would have liked it if the two ongoing narratives verged more, I have to admit that this one really had me thinking. I can't wait to see what Harrigan has in store for us next.

Being familiar with how covers come to be attached to a book, I seldom judge a book by its cover. I will, however occasionally be enticed or turned off by the blurbs that accompany the book - on the back cover or inside the front. Merely reading the back cover copy actually turned me away from this book initially. And that would have been a shame, because this is one very good book, in almost every category one could imagine. One other small niggle--it's categorized as fiction or detective and mystery story; it's certainly fiction, but I think it's much more of a suspense novel (with a touch of romance thrown in for good measure) than anything else.

It is very well-written, and the author obviously knows of what he writes! The story is told in first person by the male protagonist, Jake (J. P.) Morgan, who is very sensitive towards the opinions and thoughts of the females he encounters in the telling of the tale.

Jake is a financial planner in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. One of his clients is Lars Johanson, a professor at Northland College of Arts and Sciences. After having invited Jake to a reception there, Lars doesn't appear, a somewhat surprising turn of affairs. However, one of his colleagues is there, and makes a startling conquest of Jake before he even realizes what has happened to him.

The beautiful Brazilian-born (but now U.S. citizen) Sonia Lindquist, teaches Art History at the school, but also works for a local gallery, specializing in art from South America. She is divorced (as is Jake) and has a young son, Rodrigo, who suffers from Williams Syndrome, which causes physical and mental problems, non-life-threatening, but difficult, nonetheless.

At the reception, Sonia tangles verbally with a new local philanthropist, a Mr. Radezewell, who promptly insults the memory and reputation of the very liberal U. S. Senator Paul Wellstone, who had recently died in a plane crash.

Jake falls hard for Sonia, and at first she reciprocates his feelings, but he, too, has a past that comes back to bite him--he's an alcoholic. He's been dry for five years, but can promise her no more than `one day at a time'. She wants more than that.

The day after the reception, Jake receives a note from Lars, directing him to a storage locker at the Mall of America, and asking Jake to secure the contents until Lars can explain. The contents consist of a million dollars in apparently unmarked and untraceable bills. After yet another day of hearing nothing from Lars, Jake heads to Lars' cabin in the north, and finds his mutilated body.

Almost immediately thereafter, Jake and Sonia find themselves being stalked, and banding together, they set out to find the missing items and decide the purpose of the money.

Here is where the suspense begins to build, as they must find ways and means to continue their search while staying alive. Rodrigo is sent to his grandparents in Rio, while Jake and Sonia discover the underbelly of American society in which money will buy nearly anything, including false IDs, untraceable guns and various other nefarious items.

It's a crackling good story that always makes sense. Every now and then, a marvelous fragment of a sentence grabs you and won't let go. For example: on page 229, `when cultures mix, exciting things happen.' and from page 247 `he ran into the bullet'.

As Jake and Sonia stumble around searching for the solution to the problem, she calls it a `jaytoo', or workaround. What a wonderful title that would have made. Totally unique, too. The Jaytoo.

Woven throughout are wonderful references to older Broadway musicals, old songs and the entertainers who made them famous. It adds a great amount of character delineation as Jake explains, and she struggles to understand, given their differences in age and ethnic background.. The story also provides an excellent introduction to Williams Syndrome, for those of us without previous knowledge of the symptoms and effects, as well as an insider's view of alcoholism and the constant struggle to get through just `one day at a time'.

I do take exception to his minor grumble about Title Nine, however; men had it their way for 20 or more centuries. Certainly, we women should have at least part of one!

Fabulous book - I recommend it highly! In fact, I do hope Mr. Harrigan writes more of them.

A conspiracy. Romance. Lots of local color. And fast paced.
First novelist John Harrigan debuts with a "The Patron Saint of Desperate Situations" and a welcome it is. The conspiracy concerns the death of liberal Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone. The romance is between our narrator, a successful professional financial adviser (and recovering alcoholic) named J.P. Morgan (Right! But he prefers to be called Jake) who meets early on Sonia, a Brazilian ex-patriot, divorcee, and mother of a young boy. Set entirely in Minnesota, and more particularly the Twin Cities (Minneapolis and St. Paul), Harrigan flavors the novel with plenty of local spots, niceties, and stories that lend deeply to the landscape and atmosphere of his story.
As this is a compelling story of murder and mayhem (to go along with the romance), Harrigan treats us to a plot that moves along at breakneck speed. The death of Sen. Wellstone, however, merely overhadowis the storyline. A suspicious death of Jake's best friend, with what appears to be connecting links to Wellstone turns into more than that. And because the friend had left notes (and possibly more) with Jake, the real murderers will stop at nothing to retrieve the incriminating evidence the friend possessed. From this point on, the pace only accelerates and by the time the conclusion hits us, the climactic scene is almost Hamlet-esque (with all those bodies lying around in Act V!).
"Patron Saint" is a good read. Harrigan spices the narrative with tidbits of art history, jazz, and even some dining delights. Here's to Harrigan's second novel! [...]

Sonia, a sultry single mother from Brazil and financial planner Jake meet by chance at a dinner and Jake is smitten from the beginning. It soon becomes clear however that their meeting was not a chance encounter at all and that both of their lives are in serious danger because of the shady dealings of a mutual friend who had appeared to be as straight as an arrow to Jake. What's worse, the bad guys seem all too willing to use Sonia's son to try and get what they want. A desperate situation indeed faces our two heroes especially until they figure out what the thugs actually want. These are two people trying to simultaneously deal with a mystery and a budding romance while being chased by murderous thugs and all the while trying to figure out whom they can trust. To make matters even more desperate Jake's business is suffering from his absence and the police are seriously looking at the two as suspects in a murder.

Sonia turns to Saint Jude the Patron Saint of desperate situations and lost and impossible causes as the pair searches for a solution to their mountain of problems. St. Jude, a blood relative of Jesus has long been called upon by Christians who faced what appeared to be insurmountable odds and is most commonly known today because of the hospital in Memphis named for him. It was due to his patronage of desperate situations that Danny Thomas decided to name his research hospital for children's cancer for St. Jude. It is indeed fitting that a dedicated mother like Sonia would feel drawn to this ancient Saint of the Church.

This is John Harrigan's first novel and it is a fantastic start. The characters that he has created are very believable and are brought to life in a very vivid way. To me, a fiction author who can make the reader really worry about and care for the characters in a book has found his calling and John Harrigan does that in this book. Like most of us the characters aren't purely good or purely evil and even some of the worst characters have their good points. The heroes are also quite less than perfect and no matter how beautiful she is I am of the opinion that Sonia would be a hard woman to live with. By the end of the book in fact I didn't really care for her but I was still concerned for her safety. Not many authors could inspire this duality of emotions and I was frankly amazed to find myself feeling this way.

This is an extremely well written thriller, mystery and love story that kept me enthralled from beginning to end. I couldn't seem to put this book down and in fact it took me longer to figure out how I could do this book justice in a review than it took for me to devour it. I can't wait for more!