She's the daughter of the latest would-be saint he's investigating.

Heaven only knows if he was one; to add to his defects, he was a 'Newlight', as the would-be saints of those days were called.

(Unlike politicians, however, would-be saints did not write their own memoirs and were usually long dead by the time the book came out.)

The pale plaster walls were unmarked; no would-be saints lay here, it seemed.

While Job blathers on about Phylis, the young man teases and torments the would-be saint with lies and vicious physical challenges.

"I hate would-be saints," said Hawk.

"Well, well, I think you may have got some of our southern sinners, as well as our would-be saints!"

Like many autobiographers, he compelled attention by presenting himself as a child of the times, but that gambit proved so catchy that readers ignored the would-be saint.

But at any rate he was not a saint or a would-be saint: he was a human being, and in some ways not a very good one.

Doris Grady's rambling victorian house in Pittsburgh has seen more than its share of would-be saints.