The Good Samaritan

‘Bubbles with plots, counter-plots, mystery and romance’
Prima

When an enigmatic stranger crosses their path, the Hunter family’s life is never the same again.

Lois Hunter is well off, happily married; she has a nice home, two happy well adjusted sons, and lives in a beautiful part of the country – Dorset. Husband Ken, a City banker, lives in London during the week and comes home at weekends. Both are pillars of the community, into good causes and local activities, keen supporters of the hunt. A good, satisfying, richly rewarding life one might think.

Why, then, with so much going for her, does Lois develop an attachment to a beggar she sees outside a supermarket? There is nothing sexual in it; she insists on that. The sight of Oliver and his two puppies sitting on the pavement on a cold October afternoon touched her heart. She resolves to do all she can to help Oliver despite the protestations of Ken and her sister Wendy.

Shortly after they meet, Oliver disappears, to reemerge six months later, injured, and, once again, he becomes the object of Lois’s solicitude.

With a broken arm, Oliver is now unable to move on and Lois insists that he stay on their land in a van she has bought to replace the broken-down one he arrived in, and which he firmly regards as his home, despite an invitation to live indoors. All this not unnaturally produces strain between Lois and Ken, and Wendy, too, is critical of her sister’s philanthropy until she meets Oliver and in turn, and as irrationally, becomes as obsessed by this mysterious stranger as Lois.

For Oliver is mysterious. He will not say anything about himself, where he came from, or tell anyone his surname. He is not even particularly grateful for all the attention that is lavished on him.

The effect of this enigmatic man on the Hunter family and the disruption he causes form the basis of this engrossing novel, which also has undertones of a psychological thriller.