'This Holiday Season, Santa Wants Revenge'

After Duncan Wagner kidnaps Gabriel Booker, the eleven year old son of a wealthy State Representative, he begins his quest for ransom and revenge. Now face to face with a real boy, he has no clue about how to run a kidnapping. Wagner, a self-styled charity Santa Claus who keeps his collections, comes to realize the boy is truly a runaway, more curious than scared. Gabriel has no idea who Duncan Wagner is - or could be. In an apartment in downtown Boston, the odd pair forms an unpredictable alliance in this compelling and noteworthy holiday seasonal story.

In A Jolly Good Fellow, author Stephen V. Masse invites you into a world of crime, unusual friendship between a down-and-out adult and a child ready for adventure, and the consequences of revenge.

"It's a great story about an adult/child relationship, conflicted characters and humorous but deeply moving situations," says Masse. "You won't want to put it down even after you've finished the last sentence."

Duncan Wagner chafes at the isolation he has been living in for several years since his fiancée broke off their engagement. His obvious motive for kidnapping Gabriel Booker is to extort ransom money from his most hated enemy, State Representative Winthrop Booker III. But A Jolly Good Fellow is much more about the hidden motives of the kidnapper, and his hunger for redemption.

Masse's choice of putting Duncan Wagner in a Santa Claus costume addresses a reality that many people face around the holidays - the coupling of loneliness with the sense of generosity and desire to be part of something magical and spiritual. "This book took form during a depressed period after the end of a serious love," Masse tells. "The characters of Duncan and Gabriel come together for therapy-if one can call it that."

In A Jolly Good Fellow, Masse deals with real-life issues including: