Story telling may be the second oldest profession.  Stories help us understand who we are and how we relate to the world in which we find ourselves.  We see characters put in different situations, and, if the story is a good one, even though it is a fiction, we learn about ourselves from what happens to the characters.

The stories in the Steel City series of books concern the adventures of  Sam Budda and Nick Savarese, former government operatives, now retired and running a personal protection business in Pittsburgh. 

As former government operatives, Sam and Nick have no illusions about the government or its benevolence, and in fact, a problem that goes through each of the books is pervasive governmental corruption.

The government agencies Sam and Nick encounter are typically unresponsive, arrogant and dishonest.  Far from being conservators of social values and traditions, government agencies themselves and their agents—the police, the courts, the prosecutors, judges, mayors, governors and bureaucrats and minor functionaries, even Senators and Presidents—satisfy their greed and desire for power at the public expense. 

Corruption and malfeasance in the world of the Steel City novels, however, is not limited to government.  It is rampant in the non-governmental world, as well.  Prestigious law firms will do anything for money and individuals in and out of corporations surf life for the easy buck.

For twenty-five years, Sam and Nick worked exclusively for the CIA and the Pentagon.  They were hired to travel the world and to investigate, carry messages, make persuasive arguments, reassure, and sometimes kill friends and enemies of the United States.  In retirement, they do many of the same things they did when they worked as contractors for the government.  And on occasion, they continue to work for the government when it seeks them out for special projects. 

Most of us reading these stories do not find ourselves setting up Claymore mines to trap renegade SWAT teams (book1), or smashing armoured trucks into warehouses in order to rescue a colleague (book 2), or hiring a motorcycle gang to sodomize a rapist (book 3), or trying to escape from a man the size of a refrigerator who is trying to kill us(book 4), or firing automatic weapons into a crowd of gangsters who is amusing itself by watching dogs kill men (book 5), or engaging in a fight with Bowie knives against a veteran from the French Foreign Legion (book 6), or assisting an old man in his eighties to mount a .95 caliber rifle on a railroad trestle for the purpose of assassinating a corrupt government official (book 7), or rescuing United States Senators from assassins operating under the direction of the President (book 8).  We don’t do these things ourselves, but we learn from watching fictional characters who do.  Would this really happen?  Why did he do that?  Didn’t he overlook something?  What are the consequences of that?

Or maybe we are just amused.  We entertain ourselves.  We read our book on the beach or late at night in bed.  We transport ourselves out of our lives and into another life where we get to do what the protagonist does.  For a moment, we are Sam or Nick.   We have helped someone against great odds.  We have been brave.  We have persevered.  We have overcome our fears and hesitations and our desires to be safe.  We have taken a chance.   For a moment, we live in the world of heroes and heroic action; we experience the power of good over evil.

All of these novels have been written and rewritten over the last several years, and now I am publishing them one at a time, starting with the last one, Steel City 7.  From there I will go to Steel City 1, and then to the remaining books.  I hope you enjoy the books. 

William Lafferty

December 2009