The Samaritan by Stephen Besecker
Wednesday, June 22, 2011 at 12:24AM 
Published by Bancroft Press on June 24, 2011
The Samaritan begins with an assassination. As in many similar thrillers, the reader is given a lovingly detailed description of the assassin’s weapon and accessories, clothing, preparation, surroundings, breathing, patience, and discipline. It is too familiar to constitute a promising start.
The assassination -- of a crime family boss -- takes place in the prologue. The novel’s first section takes place before the assassination. The set-up occurs in chapter two with the deaths of two upscale sisters who are drinking in a downscale bar in the Bronx. When two young mobsters try to shake down the bartender, one of the women (a Broadway director) rather improbably starts the carnage by grabbing the mobster’s gun. Her soon-to-be-dead sister turns out to be married to Kevin “Hatch” Easter, a CIA field operative the reader meets in chapter one. Most of part one is about Hatch grieving his wife’s death and bonding with CIA hit man Gray Taylor.
Part two takes place after the assassination. Predictably enough, more killings follow as a character identified only as “the hunter” orchestrates an unlikely plan to have all the bad guys in New York (mobsters and gang bangers and crooked cops) wage war against each other as part of a vendetta arising out of the sisters’ deaths. The growing body count disturbs Hatch’s CIA boss who thinks Hatch might be behind it. He asks Taylor to get involved. The novel’s hook is the mystery of “the hunter’s” identity: is it Hatch, or Hatch’s brother, or someone acting on Hatch’s behalf, or someone else entirely? Stephen Besecker engages in the misdirection one would expect in a mystery/thriller, but doesn’t plant the kind of clues that would allow an astute reader to identify “the hunter.” The mystery’s resolution is too nonsensical to be shocking, too contrived to have the impact that Besecker intended.
Entirely too much of The Samaritan goes unexplained, probably because no plausible explanation could be concocted. Besecker’s characters apparently have the ability to walk through walls; they enter secure areas undetected but we never see how they do it. Nor do we learn how they are able to eavesdrop on both sides of encrypted conversations. The CIA’s involvement in this mess is ludicrous, as is its supposed cooperation with another federal agency -- it just wouldn’t happen as Besecker describes it. In fact, the novel begins with Hatch assigned to a mission that might be of interest to the Justice Department but not to the CIA. The story circles back around to that mission in the last chapter without ever offering a credible explanation of the CIA’s involvement in it. That’s just one of many instances in which the novel requires the reader to put common sense on hold and to ignore gaping plot holes.
The characters are equally difficult to believe. Nearly every character in the novel is the TV version of the real thing. The organized crime characters, from their nicknames to their speech and mannerisms, seem like second-string mobsters from The Sopranos. Particularly fanciful is the CIA assassin who gets hit on by Mick Jagger’s girlfriend at Yoko Ono’s parties. Some of this could be forgiven if the writing were of a higher quality, but this isn’t a novel you’ll want to seek out for its scintillating prose. Besecker’s dialog is weak; except for the aforementioned mobsters, every character -- from cops to spies to hookers to dealers to Howie Long -- speaks in the same voice. It’s never a believable voice.
The only positive I can cite is the novel’s pace. It’s a quick, easy read. For that reason, some readers will probably like it. I didn’t and I can’t recommend it.
NOT RECOMMENDED