Mary Sullivan holds a man responsible for her daughter’s death by overdose, a man she has never met, a man her daughter never met, an elusive man who has been on the lam for 21 years. She wants to find him...that’s as far as her planning has taken her. This obsession is all that stands between her and self-destruction. She buys a gun and sets out.

Tommy Gallagher has been on the run from his past for two decades. Now in his mid forties he is tired of running. Then the universe delivers a one-two punch in the form of a young woman named Kim appearing at his door claiming to be his biological daughter, and what appears to be a chance meeting with a beautiful woman named Mary in the Tam O’ Shanter Saloon, a woman talking about "starting over," "telling the truth," and kissing him like he hasn’t been kissed in a long time.

Tommy’s instinct is to run but he does not, such is his interest in the mysterious Mary and his need to know the truth about Kim. Mary is torn between her desire to destroy the man she holds responsible for the death of her daughter and a shameful, untenable attraction she feels for him. She is also mysteriously drawn to the young woman claiming to be his biological daughter.

Love and sex, secrets and lies, grief and ecstasy intermingle in Patrick Coyle’s explosive YEAR OF BAD MEN, a femme-noir.