The Good Samaritan

The Good Samaritan (2017) is a psychological thriller by British author John Marrs. A former freelance journalist, Marrs is known for writing high-concept thrillers, including The One, which was adapted into a Netflix series. The novel uses a (mostly) dual-perspective narrative, following a duplicitous suicide helpline volunteer who secretly goads callers into ending their lives, as well as the vengeful husband of one of her victims who sets out to expose her. The story explores The Compulsive Nature of Manipulation and Control, The Blurred Line Between Victim and Perpetrator, and Rewriting Reality to Reconcile Trauma.

This guide refers to the 2018 Thomas & Mercer edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide feature depictions of death, illness, disordered eating, mental illness, suicidal ideation, death by suicide, graphic violence, physical abuse, emotional abuse, child abuse, child sexual abuse, child death, bullying, addiction, animal cruelty, and cursing.

Plot Summary

The narrative opens with Laura, a volunteer at the suicide helpline “End of the Line,” as she expertly manipulates two callers, a pregnant woman named Charlotte and a man named David (later revealed to be her childhood friend, Nate), into a joint suicide. She listens with euphoric satisfaction as they step off a cliff at Birling Gap, Sussex.

Part 1 skips forward four months, though Laura remains much the same. To her colleagues, Laura presents herself as a compassionate, maternal figure, but she continues to seek out vulnerable callers whom she can guide toward death, a practice she calls “helping.” Meanwhile, her home life is strained. Her marriage to her husband, Tony, is faltering, and her relationships with their daughters, 14-year-old Effie and nine-year-old Alice, are distant and controlling. She is haunted by a past ovarian cancer diagnosis and obsessed with her weight, taking illicit slimming pills. Her emotional “anchor” is her seven-year-old son, Henry, who lives in a residential care home due to a disability that results in an approximate mental age of one. Laura also maintains a connection with Nate, a childhood friend from foster care who is unhoused and addicted to alcohol.

As Laura begins manipulating a new caller, Steven, into suicide, further details surrounding her past emerge. Her mother died of cancer, an event that sparked Laura’s obsession with a person’s last breath. Not long afterward, her grieving father murdered her two younger sisters and then died by suicide. Later, in an abusive foster home, Nate killed their foster mother, Sylvia, to stop her from sexually trafficking Laura. This act led to Nate’s imprisonment and their separation.

While Laura regularly furnishes callers with advice about how to implement their suicides, she is taken aback when Steven, a young man with depression, asks her to be with him in person when he dies. Nevertheless, she ultimately agrees, her fascination with death winning out over her concerns about her own safety. When she arrives at the given address, however, she finds herself confronted with dozens of photos of herself; Steven has apparently been stalking her. He then emerges, informing her that the noose hanging from the ceiling is meant for her, not him. Laura manages to escape by stabbing him in the stomach.

The perspective then shifts to Ryan Smith, a graphic designer whose pregnant wife, Charlotte, was the woman Laura guided to suicide. His story begins the day of her death: Devastated and disbelieving the police report of a suicide pact, Ryan investigates Charlotte’s final weeks. He discovers her struggles with prenatal depression and her frequent calls to the helpline. On Charlotte’s hidden files, he finds extensive suicide research and references to an online figure known as the “Freer of Lost Souls,” a helpline volunteer who encourages callers to die. Determined to find this person, Ryan creates the persona of “Steven” and begins methodically calling the helpline, logging each volunteer he speaks to. After speaking with dozens of volunteers, he finally reaches Laura, whose unique, manipulative approach confirms that she is the Freer of Lost Souls. Ryan begins surveilling Laura, learning about her family and daily routines. He ultimately lures her to the house he had secretly bought as a surprise for Charlotte, hoping to frighten rather than kill her.

Part 2 opens immediately after the stabbing, alternating between Ryan and Laura’s perspectives. Ryan survives, but as he recovers, he begins to feel that scaring Laura was not enough and that she will continue to prey on her callers. To exact revenge, Ryan, a teacher at Effie’s school, takes advantage of a staff change to become her head of year. He systematically undermines Effie’s academic performance and social standing, preying on her insecurities. Effie develops a crush on him, which he exploits before cruelly rejecting her, leaving her humiliated.

Meanwhile, Laura stages her own injuries as a random assault, creating an alibi and gaining sympathy from Tony and her colleagues. Learning about Ryan’s manipulation of Effie temporarily stuns her, as does the revelation that her manager at the charity, Janine Thomson, is having an affair with Tony. What’s more, it emerges that Laura has been living apart from her husband and daughters for nearly two years after an undisclosed incident prompted Tony to leave her; Laura deceived herself about their continued presence in her house, and she still cannot remember what caused the rupture. Despite these shocks, Laura’s plan to destroy Ryan intensifies. With Effie’s help, she plants child pornography on Ryan’s work computer and posts a manipulated recording of a conversation between Ryan and Effie on social media, leading to his suspension and public vilification for grooming.

Meanwhile, Ryan, seeking an ally, has met with Janine and given her the recordings of his incriminating conversations with Laura. Fearing exposure, Laura bakes sedatives into muffins for Janine and then bludgeons her to death with a hammer she stole from Ryan’s apartment. She also transfers charity funds into Janine’s accounts to make it appear that Janine was an embezzler. Now the prime suspect in Janine’s murder, publicly disgraced, and abandoned by his family, Ryan drives to Birling Gap and dies by suicide.

Part 3 picks up two months later. Ryan’s brother, Johnny, knows the full story and seeks revenge by confronting Laura at Henry’s care home. There, he goads her with what he learned from a conversation with Tony about the true cause of Henry’s disability: Laura, in a fit of rage over her failing marriage, set their house on fire, and Henry suffered severe brain damage from smoke inhalation. This was what prompted Tony to leave (it was also what caused Laura’s hospitalization—not cancer). Moreover, “David” was actually Nate, a detail Laura had suppressed (elsewhere, it emerges that Laura similarly misremembered the truth of their time in foster care, where she bullied Nate, Sylvia’s son, and manipulated him into killing his mother).

Now, Johnny threatens to expose Laura unless she confesses on video. Laura, however, happens to have recently sent Tony several emails about meeting at the care home; concerned about Henry’s well-being and Laura’s mental health, he now shows up. Seeing a man who looks like Ryan threatening his family, Tony attacks Johnny and beats him to death. Laura allows the murder to happen, withholding Johnny’s true identity. She then reveals to a horrified Tony that she has recorded the killing on Johnny’s phone. She uses this evidence to blackmail Tony into reuniting their family under her roof.

In the aftermath, Laura is promoted to branch manager at the helpline. Her family lives with her, but Tony is a broken, captive man, and Effie is traumatized and resentful. Laura believes she has won, but an Epilogue narrated by Effie reveals that she knows the extent of her mother’s crimes and secretly copied the recordings of Laura’s conversations with Ryan before Laura could destroy the evidence. Effie begins anonymously emailing clips from these recordings to Laura, initiating her own campaign of psychological torment and vowing to destroy her mother using her own manipulative tactics.