The Fall

Army vet turned private eye, Felix Strange is working the mean streets of New York, desperately trying to earn enough to fund the black-market drugs he needs to stay alive. In a newly fundamentalist America governed by Christian extremists where women’s bodies are no longer their own, taking on the case of a young girl indicted for murder after a misscarriage is reckless. But not even Strange can imagine that this is just the beginning…

I wrote The Fall so I could put Felix Strange on a smaller scale, before The First Stone. The Strange of this story is just trying to get from one day to the next, and thinks he’s only interested in making a living and staying alive. If he really was committed to those two goals, he wouldn’t help a girl accused of murder after she fell down the stairs and miscarried, especially since the father was the son of a prominent government official. Sooner or later, Strange’s big mouth, hatred of authority and general bloody-mindedness is going to get him into serious trouble with the brutal, humourless zealots running the government.

Then a prominent radio minister is murdered in New York, the religious police come calling, and his reckoning with the Elders and his own past begins.