Customer Reviews

Sinners and Saints

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Chastity Byrne's life is going as she wants: she's a forensic nurse, got a new puppy, everything in order. Then, her ER doc mentions "Chaos Theory" and only minutes later, everything goes rapidly downhill.

She gets a desperate call from a brother in law she never knew even existed. Her sister, Faith, who'd abandoned her more than 10 years earlier at 16 is missing. Her 'new' brother in law, Dr. Max Stanton, is desperate to find his wife.

Chastity is convinced to go to New Orleans to seek out a sister she's not even sure she wants to find. She discovers pretty quickly that everyone who's given Faith any help is being killed off. Worse, there's a hurricane coming and there's only one thing that Chastity fears more than that...

Her father---who coincidentally is alive, well, and out of jail.

"Sinners and Saints" is a very well-written thriller that sinks its hooks into you and doesn't let go. Chastity Bryne is one of the strongest heroines I've ever read--despite her fears and wish not to go on. This is my first Dreyer novel and I can assure you--will not be my last.

Just when forensic nurse Chastity O'Connor believes she has her life on track, a call from New Orleans turns her world upside down. The brother-in-law she never knew she had calls to tell her that her sister Faith is missing. Chastity hasn't seen her sister or her mother in a decade ever since they abandoned her when she was sixteen forcing her to live on the streets.

Even though she knows her sister blames her for sending their father to jail, Chastity goes to New Orleans to help in the search for her sibling who she believes disappeared when her mother died in order to escape reality. Three women associated with Faith and the fertility clinic where she was donating her eggs have been murdered all by the same killer. Chastity now fears that Faith ran because she was afraid for her life. Desperate to find her sister, she falls into a murderer's trap but with the assistance of a sexy cab driver, she might escape in time to save her sister.

The heroine is one of the most courageous characters to ever grace the pages of a novel. Despite the abuse she suffered as a child and overcoming traumatic fears, she makes the effort to save the sister who discarded her and never tried to make contact with her. The villain is hidden in plain sight and will come as quite a shock to the readers who never would have guessed the identity. Eileen Dreyer writes a brilliant crime thriller that starts off fast and never slows down until the last page is turned while also filled with excellent characterizations, realistic action scenes and terrific pacing.

Harriet Klausner

The main action in Eileen Dreyer's new thriller, "Sinners and Saints," is set in New Orleans on the eve of a hurricane. The lead character, forensic nurse Chastity Byrnes, is an emotional wreck because of past traumas that she hints at but does not spell out until later in the book. She has been seeing a therapist for a long time, takes antianxiety medication, and is terrified of drowning. However, she valiantly picks herself up from her relatively safe haven in St. Louis and answers a call for help from her brother-in-law, surgeon Max Stanton. It seems that Faith Stanton, Chastity's sister and Max's wife, has gone missing and Max asks Chastity to help find her. Chastity has been out of touch with Faith for years, but she decides that it is her duty to assist Max in any way that she can.

Max gives Chastity carte blanche to search his house and papers in an effort to garner clues about Faith's whereabouts. While in New Orleans, Chastity takes advantage of the hospitality of a fellow nurse named Kareena Boudreaux, a saucy and sexy Cajun woman with a colorful way of speaking. To get around New Orleans, Chastity hires James Guidry, a physically and emotionally scarred ex-fireman; he proves to be a handy man to have around in a crisis. Chastity contacts everyone who knew Faith and she discovers that her sister had been visiting a fertility clinic. Could the clinic somehow be connected to Faith's disappearance? Much to Chastity's chagrin, some of the people whom she interviews turn up dead, and she feels guilty for having put them in danger. Unfortunately, the New Orleans police are not much help. As the hurricane nears and threatens to flood the city, Chastity is tempted to hop on the next plane back to St. Louis before she is either swept away by the tides or murdered by a sadistic killer.

Eileen Dreyer captures the ambiance of New Orleans perfectly. She nails the "anything goes" party atmosphere, the obsession with death and cemeteries, and the feeling of imminent danger that goes with living in a place that lies below sea level. Unfortunately, this is a very talky book with dialogue that is sometimes stilted and silly (I get irritated every time Chastity calls James "Fireman" and he calls her "Nurse,") but the patois spoken by certain characters such as a psychic named Tante Edie is colorful and intriguing.

"Sinners and Saints" is a pedestrian mystery with a bunch of red herrings that do not lead anywhere. The novel drags towards the conclusion; it could easily have been trimmed by at least fifty pages with no loss of coherence. However, there are some worthwhile elements that redeem the novel somewhat. Chastity is an appealing heroine, with her mixture of fear and spunk, and it is entertaining to watch her relationship with James heat up. We grow to care about her, and we root for her to catch the murderer and overcome her fears. By far, the best reason to read "Sinners and Saints" is that it brings New Orleans to life at a time when this beautiful, historic, and unique city is struggling mightily to get back on its feet.

My book club's book for April was Sinners and Saints, by Eileen Dreyer. We've been experimenting with different ways of reading. Last month we decided to read two books with similar settings, and then compare/contrast them. This month we all put our names in a hat. The person whose name was selected was in charge of getting the book. We all gave her $10 and shipped her off to the bookstore to come back with 10 copies of the chosen book for us. We all know each other pretty well, and we know what we like and what we don't, so this wasn't as risky as it sounds.

She came back with 10 copies of Sinners and Saints. She said she chose the book because several of us have friends or family in New Orleans, and we've all been concerned about what's going on down there in the wake of Katrina. Also, the book has a fabulous cover....

We liked the book's set-up quite a bit. Chastity Byrnes is a forensic nurse living in St. Louis. She has a troubled past that has led to a break with her sister, Faith. Out of the blue Chastity gets a call from a brother-in-law she didn't know she had. He asks for her help in finding Faith in New Orleans. Sensing the opportunity for a reconciliation, Chastity heads off to the Big Easy. We all thought this was a very plausible premise for a mystery. One member mentioned that the subtext is the idea that nothing interesting happens in America's "second cities" like St. Louis, Indianapolis, and Cincinnati--and that you have to go to one of the big cities to get any excitement.

We also loved the New Orleans atmosphere--the sense of personal freedom, the cemeteries, parties, the "get drunk and make love" ethos of the place, along with its darker side of voodoo history and crime. As Chastity investigates, she finds that people who tried to help her sister have also disappeared, which is a suspenseful premise. Interestingly, what also adds incredibly well to the suspense is a gathering storm/hurricane that could wipe out New Orleans. So, Chastity is racing against the clock and, perhaps, someone who's out to get her. Again, this was a totally plausible scenario and really made for a page-turner.

We liked the characters too, though, but with some reservations. Chastity, while engaging, seems to be today's stock mystery heroine, independent and sassy. There's also the sort of stock romance with an ex-fireman she hires to be her guide around New Orleans. The dialogue there can get a little cloyingly cute. We also felt that the book was a little too long. In addition, this is a very Mary Higgins Clark type of book, with short sentences and paragraphs written at a very low reading level. This makes it a good book for people of all ages, but it's not really a sophisticated read, and some of the writing is unintentionally funny. (Example: "Chastity embraced a plethora of personal portents.") A couple of us have teenage children and we thought this would be a good book to help them make the transition into adult reading, especially because the story is so cinematic and well crafted.

So, in a nutshell, we really did enjoy this book. It created a sense of sadness all over again for what has happened to the people of New Orleans, and it also made several us think we'd like to pick up another book by the same author as a good beach or airplane read.

Picked up the hardcover of this for 5 bucks at a Barnes & Noble bargain table early last year, and read it as a summer book out by the pool. I think I'd assumed that because it was on the bargain table it would be of inferior quality, but I was pleasantly surprised.

Chastity Byrnes is a nurse working in forensics, and she's a jaded girl with a lot of baggage, mostly having to do with her family - a father who did horrific things to his daughters, a sister who denies it all, and a mother who hates Chastity for bringing ruin onto the family when all was revealed. Chastity has her own demons to haunt her and just wants to leave the past as far behind her as possible, but the sudden disappearance of the sister she hasn't seen in a decade drags her right back to New Orleans and all the memories she's been trying so desperately to escape.

This is set in pre-Katrina New Orleans and was published just before Katrina, so the author unknowingly evokes emotions and insights into an old New Orleans that is no more, and all the more valuable in memory now. Ironically, as Chastity gets closer to a truth darker than even she was expecting, a hurricane is moving in and the city is being evacuated and closed off.

In many ways it's a somber, devastating book, given Chastity's past and the havoc it continues to wreak on her life, but the characters are almost flawless and in Chastity's darkest realizations, light finally shines for the first time. I liked it, and her, despite my usual distaste for tough-talking female stereotypes. Recommended.

A wonderful crime thriller that I couldn't put down. It's been years since I've said that about a book, but this one has something happening every minute. It's not only suspenseful, but often laugh-out-loud funny. The characters are well-rounded, with both tragic pasts and great senses of humor. The action takes place in New Orleans (what can be better) in the days leading up to what promises to be a major hurricane. I have read the historical novels of Ms. Dreyer's, with mixed results, and read this only because of the great reviews. They were well deserved, and I intend to look for more of her work.

This book is a powerful romantic suspense. Although there is not much actual sex, the tension is beautiful and the characters are so loveable that you forget it's not a typical romantic suspense.

I loved the characters, the way they were written and especially the twists and turns, all of which I never saw coming!

Definately a good read, but don't expect it to be romantic in the ways a Nora Roberts or Sandra Brown romantic suspense is.

Oh my gosh, what a great book! Chastity Byrnes, a forensic nurse in St. Louis, gets a phone call from a brother-in-law she never knew she had. Her sister, Faith, had left home ten years ago and never contacted her because of very serious things which had happened during their childhood. Now Faith's husband, Max, desperately needs Chastity to come to New Orleans to look for his wife, who has again disappeared.

Against a deadly backdrop of an impending hurricane, Chastity finds herself in the world of NOLA before Katrina, where nothing is exactly as it seems. Her search takes her into the voodoo world as well as the exclusive southern high society world in the worst and best parts of New Orleans. She winds up investigating some questionable fertility clinics and several murders with the help of a badly burn-disfigured cabdriver and a close friend who is also a forensic nurse in New Orleans (both of whom I adored). But Chastity, in spite of horrendous internal demons that keep her fingering a bag of jewels in her pocket to keep those demons away, is the undisputed kickass heroine of this book.

It's been a long time since I've read a thriller this exciting. Good thing it was, too, because I had to read it in bits and snatches over the past two weeks. The thing that struck me most was that the plot and writing and characters and location were all so vivid and memorable that no matter where I had to leave off, when I picked it back up again I remembered everything and never once had to go back a chapter or two to refresh my memory. If I don't have time to just sit and read a book right through and it sits more than a few days it takes an exceptional book to pull me back. This book pulled me back time and again; I almost couldn't bear to put it down. It'll be a long, long time before I forget SINNERS AND SAINTS.

In this thriller from St. Louis, we find the difficult situation of the sisters who have been estranged for ten years. Faith is missing, and so Chastity flies to New Orleans to look for her despite their differences. She muddles through the voodoo still prominent in that watery city and finds the services of a psychic as the aauthorities weave their lies and intrigue along the way. The powers of St. Roch may not be enough to show Chas the way to go for guidance.

The taxi driver is a good guide and guard as she encounters the wrong sort of people all het up as a hurricane is headed in their direction. They have learned that the place is not safe when the waters overflow. Sometimes, the devil's advocates like to think of themselves as saints; I am aware of some in L.A. and Denver, perhaps that one in New York, who conspire to cause havoc and keep their jobs at the same time. Two are saints, Winston and Charles. The other two are devils of the worst sort.

There are more sinners than saints in this action-filled story. All alone the way, the person she is afraid of finding has already found her and is shadowing her every move. She makes for an intrepid heroine as she paves her path through the streets of the Big Easy.

I happily count Eileen Dreyer among my friends! As emergency dept nurses we were planning to retire as authors.....you'll note she's in print, and I'm not! Eileen is a very gifted writer, and this book is a HUGE step in becoming a New York Times Best Selling Author! Congratulations Eileen!