Bad Samaritan Re-Release

 

Today is the re-issue date for the fifth Nick Forte novel, Bad Samaritan, originally published in January of 2018. This is currently the most recent novel in which Forte is the protagonist, though he does make an appearance in the Penns River novel, The Spread.

Bad Sam was my examination of men’s activist groups and the damage they cause to society at large through their refusal to accept women as equals. The inciting incident is a series of letters received by soccer mom Becky Tuttle, who writes a series of bodice-ripping potboilers under an assumed name. Becky is so concerned for her family’s privacy she hired an actor to handle all her in-person appearances and interviews; a true Remington Steele scenario. Not even her editor knows who Desiree d’Arnaud really is.

Someone figures it out, though, and is sending Becky letters addressed to her pen name at the Tuttle residence. The police stand back, as there is nothing overtly threatening in any of the letters. Still, Becky and her husband are creeped out.

While investigating Becky’s situation, Forte encounters Lily O’Donoghue, the beautiful and expensive prostitute who appeared in Forte 2, The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of. She’s being blackmailed and Forte volunteers to help out of a sense of obligation to Lily’s dead mother. The blackmailer turns up dead later the same night Forte confronts him.

I spent more time researching Bad Sam than any other Forte novel, as I wanted to be sure I was fair to all sides in the men’s rights argument. That research was the most distressing and disgusting work of my writing life to that point, as what we see in mainstream media barely scratches the surface of how vile these people are, including the women who support them.

Bad Sam was a problematic book from the beginning. As regular readers know, Forte is a tough guy in the Continental Op/Mike Hammer model, though informed with 21^st Century sensibilities. While he empathizes with Becky’s and Lily’s plights, he still comes in as if he’s on a white horse, which in its way disempowers them even more. As might be expected in a story where a man feels as though he has to set things right for women regardless of what resolution they want, nothing works out the way Forte planned.

This is my most difficult book for me to write about. If you’d like more insight into Bad Sam, take a look at Benoit Lelieve’s review in Dead End Follies. It’s honest and fair and the best analysis of my work that has ever been done. I’ll let the book rise and fall on what Ben has to say about it.

Bad Samaritan is available on Amazon. Prices are $2.99 for Kindle and $9.99 for a paperback. It’s the last re-release in the Forte series. Next month will see the arrival of the sixth novel, and the first in six years, when Off the Books drops. Don’t worry that you’ll forget about it. I’m sure to remind you.