Samaritan: A Dickie Cornish Mystery

Streetwise Washington, DC PI Dickie Cornish is hired to search for an undocumented man who vanished and soon finds himself caught between ICE, D.C. hustlers, Caribbean power brokers, and a deadly secret the Feds will do anything to protect.

It’s a long, hot summer in the nation’s capitol, and former unhoused addict-turned-private investigator Dickie Cornish is struggling to stay afloat. Work is scarce, money scarcer, and he’s already sweating a possible federal charge for allegedly assaulting ICE agents while providing security at a Latino teenager’s sweet sixteen party. Then Krissten walks into his life.

A winsome blonde and ICE employee, she offers Dickie $4,000 to find her missing boyfriend, Devon, an undocumented Bahamian with connections to D.C.’s dealers and hustlers. Dickie needs the money, but his longtime friend Croc warns him that Krissten’s bosses may have an ulterior—and possibly rogue—motive. When Dickie discovers that a young man resembling Devon was found dead in an unfinished swimming pool on a Caribbean island, the case takes a deadly turn. Following Devon’s trail through the D.C. underworld, Dickie encounters a transgender hustler named Terri, a ruthless old enemy known as Mattel or “Hot Wheels,” and a web of double-crosses that reaches all the way to federal law enforcement.

Now ICE wants Dickie to locate Devon’s mother, Hyacinth, while Dickie suspects the government is protecting something—or someone—far more dangerous. With the pressure on Washington mounting, he heads to the Bahamas to uncover the truth.

In Samaritan, Christopher Chambers sends his singular streetwise detective into an international mystery of murder, immigration, betrayal, corruption, and forbidden love.