cover image The Saints of the Lost and Found

The Saints of the Lost and Found

T.M. Causey. Road Runner, $24 (300p) ISBN 978-1-937054-23-6

Avery Marie Broussard, the narrator of this repetitive novel from Causey (Bobbie Faye's Very (Very, Very, Very) Bad Day), comes from a family of con artists with unusual gifts. Avery "sees" people's losses, objects as well as less tangible things. This is a useful tool for her greedy mother and her grifter father, who knows when and how any person he meets is going to die. Avery runs away from her home in Saint Michael's, La., after trying%E2%80%94but failing%E2%80%94to help the FBI save victims of the Little Princess Killer. She returns to Saint Michael's when her father tells her that her big brother, Latham, will die unless she comes home. But home is also where divorced single dad Jack Thibodaux lives%E2%80%94the man she loves but whom her father has foreseen will kill her. Causey wrings out every drop of extreme emotion as Latham suffers from his "gift" of seeing the dead, Avery and Jack are caught in the push-pull of attraction and dread, and the LPK case won't go away. Causey's overwrought prose may be too much for some readers. (Mar.)