Author Mike Bonath has released his second novel, The Psychotic Intruder, published by Parker Publishers. It is a crime thriller that takes a settled, ordinary marriage and slowly turns up the temperature until everyone in the story has something to lose.
The book follows Johnny Allen, a postman who is worn down by early starts and a job that stopped meaning anything to him years ago. When his oldest friend, Joey, suggests they both retrain as taxi drivers, Johnny sees a way out and takes it. For a while, life feels like it is finally moving in the right direction.
Then the past walks in. Johnny’s wife, Kim, a nurse, glances up during a lunch break and recognises the new head surgeon at her hospital. He is Jimmy Barnes, the boyfriend she loved at fifteen, long before Johnny came along. Kim tells herself the feeling will pass. It does not, and Jimmy is not the man she remembers.
Around that central thread, Bonath builds a wider web of lives. Joey’s younger brother, Luke, walks out of prison and straight back into the trade that put him there. Diane is carrying a secret that could end her relationship. A motorway accident leaves Johnny’s daughter, Lizzy, sitting at her boyfriend’s hospital bedside while a legal storm gathers around him. Set largely in and around Newbury, with the action reaching as far as Bath, Reading, and the remote Scottish Highlands, the novel draws these lives together until one quiet, unseen threat is ready to push them all over the edge.
The Psychotic Intruder is Bonath’s second book, and like the first, it carries a personal signature. He wrote it alongside his daughter, Lauren Beare, who is credited as co-author, and he dedicates the novel to her and to her husband, Jack. In his acknowledgements, Bonath credits her support and encouragement as the reason the writing happened at all.
“I never imagined I would write one book, let alone two,” said Mike Bonath. “Having my daughter beside me through it changed everything. This story is about ordinary people who think the worst thing in their week is a job they have outgrown, and then find out how wrong they were.”
The Psychotic Intruder is available now worldwide.
Book details
Title: The Psychotic Intruder
Author: Mike Bonath, with Lauren Beare
Publisher: Parker Publishers
ISBN: 978-1-918199-14-7
Media contact
Parker Publishers
Contact: Parker Publishers
Email: [email protected]
Website: Parker Publishers
