Gritty, twisted and darkly hilarious, Bastard is a relentless crime thriller about justice, violence and what happens when one man takes it on himself to put the world straight – one beating at a time.
"The only thing worse than a living bastard is a dead one. And Frank O’Toole, in death, proves to be the biggest bastard of all."
Meet our narrator. He’s rich. He’s bored. He’s addicted to people-watching. And he’s an unapologetic bastard.
But when this sharp-eyed loner starts spotting even bigger bastards – the abusive, the violent, the racist – he doesn’t just watch. He acts. With fists. With fury. With lessons no one forgets.
Then he makes one mistake. He kills the wrong man, a prick in a suit with connections. Deadly ones.
Suddenly he’s caught in a criminal web that stretches from gang bosses to cartel players to corrupt corridors of power. Forced into a game where everyone’s lying, everyone’s watching and the only rule is survival, he has to decide what kind of bastard he really is.
A gripping page-turner – twisted, funny and relentlessly addictive.
Gritty, twisted and darkly hilarious, Bastard is a relentless crime thriller about justice, violence and what happens when one man takes it on himself to put the world straight – one beating at a time.
"The only thing worse than a living bastard is a dead one. And Frank O’Toole, in death, proves to be the biggest bastard of all."
Meet our narrator. He’s rich. He’s bored. He’s addicted to people-watching. And he’s an unapologetic bastard.
But when this sharp-eyed loner starts spotting even bigger bastards – the abusive, the violent, the racist – he doesn’t just watch. He acts. With fists. With fury. With lessons no one forgets.
Then he makes one mistake. He kills the wrong man, a prick in a suit with connections. Deadly ones.
Suddenly he’s caught in a criminal web that stretches from gang bosses to cartel players to corrupt corridors of power. Forced into a game where everyone’s lying, everyone’s watching and the only rule is survival, he has to decide what kind of bastard he really is.
A gripping page-turner – twisted, funny and relentlessly addictive.
“Baffftard”
“What?”
“Baffftard”
It should go without saying that it’s pretty hard to understand someone trying to speak with a gun in their mouth.
“What?”
“Baffftard, Baffftard, Baffftard, Baffftard!”
It should also go without saying that pulling the trigger does little to add clarity to what was being said. But I did it anyway. Besides, I’m pretty convinced he was calling me a ‘bastard’. And to be fair, he wasn’t wrong. I did kidnap and kill the fucker after all. But if I’m a bastard, he was a bigger one.
His name is, was, Frank O’Toole. Aptly named as it came to pass. Makes me wonder if names do more to determine fate than we give them credit for. I do well not to dwell on mine. Anyway, Frank was definitely a ’tool’ and most definitely a bastard. I first came across him in Philomena’s, an Irish pub that’s near enough Covent Garden to attract tourists but also close enough to Holborn to entice the pricks in suits who work on Kingsway.
I should, at this stage in our relationship, tell you that I people watch. It’s kind of an addiction. To the point that I sit in cafés, bars, pubs and parks for hours on end getting my fix. Makes me feel dirty. Like any addiction, I guess. Fuck it. It is what it is. Besides, people spend hours looking at art. I spend hours looking at life. And, at times, life likes to reveal some real and proper bastards.
Enter Frank O’Toole. Not content with being a prick in a suit, he made damn sure he acted the bastard too. Walked in with another couple of pricks but clear he was the biggest. Loud, brash and filled with self-importance. Grabs the barmaid. Doesn’t give a fuck that she was serving someone else. Doesn’t give a fuck about who she was serving. Rude and lewd, you get the picture. Didn’t help that I was the person being served but I try not to take things personally. I just hate bastards. And here was someone who screamed bastard at the top of his lungs.
Not that this was any reason to blow the fucker’s brains out the back of his head. We’ll get to that. But the really messed up thing about Frank was what a vindictive dead bastard he turned out to be. The only thing worse than a living bastard is a dead one. And it turns out, in death, Frank O’Toole was the biggest bastard one could imagine. Proper fucked me over. And so begins my sorry tale.
Our unnamed protagonist is rich and very bored with the typical things rich people do with their money and their time. Addicted to people-watching, he picks up a new hobby, "collecting" bastards. Taking it upon himself to teach bad guys a lesson, he educates racists and misogynists with his fists, until one day he meets a bastard he is so disgusted by, he trades his fists for a gun - and pulls the trigger.
Unfortunately for him, the dead man is connected to formidable crime boss Joey Smokes, a dangerous woman who ruthlessly took over her father's criminal enterprise and likes to conduct her conversations wielding a baseball bat. And she doesn't take lightly to anyone smoking one of her goons unless it's her.
Trying to talk his way out of a conversation with Joey's bat, our bastard talks his way deeper and deeper into London's criminal underworld. Drugs, weapons, undercover agents, corrupt politicians, cartels, bribery and deadly secrets barely begin to cover the trouble he finds himself in. He begins walking a tightrope, trying to keep the few important people in his life safe - his oblivious parents, his cousin Anna who happens to be a cop, and his best friend Dino - a bare-knuckle fighter who taught him how to take a beating like a true vigilante.
As he gets to know the more human side of Joey and becomes more deeply involved in her organization, our protagonist unwittingly begins to pull on the threads of a conspiracy that seems to go deeper than gangs and drugs and straight into the heart of government. Can our man use his people-watching instinct to survive long enough to outmaneuver the army of bastards, or will they out-bastard him?
The story is narrated in the first person with a lot of humor and grit, and in the kind of colloquial and immediate style that draws the reader in. Each chapter finds a new way to use the word "bastard" in a creative way to describe the characters our protagonist meets - corrupt politicians, undercover MI-5 agents, drug bosses - as it becomes increasingly difficult to figure out who can be trusted. Whether he's involved in a high-stakes meeting of crime bosses or enjoying a pint with Dino in their favorite pub, our bastard comments on his surroundings with disarming sharpness and wit. The way humor meets crime is deeply entertaining, hilarious, and addictive.