Looking for the novel where a man could telepathically interact with electronic devices

Question

I vaguely remember a book which I would like to read again. The plot was like this.

A man lives an ordinary life but one day he starts having some memories ... or headaches, I don't remember. The main thing is that he discovers he is able to feel and communicate with electric devices around him. And as soon as he discovers it, he starts having serious problems with some organization which had trained him and used his abilities for wrong purposes. Slowly he regains more and more memories and is forced to run and hide from physical and telepathic assassins. I remember, that there was one mystical "electrical being" which acted as his invisible "guardian angel" and this being had helped him in his early childhood when he was in a hospital. This being could manifest itself to the physical world only through electrical devices.

There was a woman who also had some telepathic abilities and her telepathic presence always was accompanied by some specific scent, like some flowers or something. This woman was an assassin sent to kill the protagonist, but then she switched sides and died. But the "electrical being" saved the woman, taking her into some "electrical" level of existence.

The style of the novel was mostly light and active adventure story. Not exactly teenager book, but also no any serious philosophical value to it.

Answer 1

That would be Coils, by Roger Zelazny and Fred Saberhagen.

The woman with the Telepathic abilities (who tended to give herself away by projecting the smells of flowers) was 'Ann'; the being that watched over him was not really revealed (in detail) until the end of the book, but was hinted at a number of times -- he's basically a consciousness that developed inside of the world networks. The love interest was 'Cora.' There were several other major characters, including a former 'Faith Healer' who could kill from close range, and a telekinetic.

Ann wasn't really the assassin; that was the former Faith Healer, but she was used to keep tabs on him and try to dissuade him from his course. When she intentionally lets him go, the Faith Healer is sent after her, and the scene you remember occurs -- she dies, but is basically uploaded by the energy-being to the network.

The company he worked for was called Angra Energy, as I recall. They had put together a group of people with various powers and used them to gain the upper hand in the energy industry, but our hero discovered things weren't quite as sweet and innocent as they claimed. After a confrontation, he ended up minus most of his memory, which is where the story begins.