You Were Never Really Here

Starred review from November 20, 2017
Former FBI agent Joe, the hero of this superb short exercise in noir from Ames (Wake Up, Sir!), once specialized in rescuing human trafficking victims, until he was traumatized by finding 30 poisoned girls in the back of a truck. Blaming himself for not saving the girls, he went AWOL. Five years later, he works as a shadowy private operative for McCleary, a former New York state trooper. McCleary assigns Joe to help state senator Votto, a big Albany power broker whose 13-year-old daughter, Lisa, disappeared six months earlier after arranging a meeting with a stranger on Facebook. Votto finally gets a solid lead—a text stating that Lisa can be found in a Manhattan brothel. Joe’s recovery mission goes horribly wrong, and Ames pulls no punches in his buildup to a grim conclusion that Jim Thompson devotees will appreciate. Evocative phrasing— “one or two ships blinked far away on the horizon, like fallen planets, and the ocean was a rolling black tongue, content for the time being to just taste the land”—is worth the price of admission alone. Agent: Eric Simonoff, William Morris Endeavor.

January 1, 2018
This white-hot short novel blasts through its 100 pages like a fireball stampeding through a tunnel. Joe, the soul-damaged veteran of child abuse, the marines, and the FBI, works as an off-the-grid vigilante, rescuing girls who have been kidnapped or sold into prostitution. His life is a revenge drama aimed at a wrong world, but this time the target becomes more personal, after Joe rescues the 13-year-old daughter of a New York state senator only to find that he has walked into a trap; the mobsters who run the bent senator retake the girl and leave a trail of dead bodies in their wake as they look for Joe. But Joe turns the tables and comes looking for them, packing his weapon of choice, a hammer, which he employs with the same icy authority as Adam Sternbergh's Spademan wielding his box cutter (Shovel Ready, 2014). There is more to come in this storyJoe's work here is unfinishedbut most readers will relish a chance to catch their breath. Brutal, unrelenting, and utterly compelling, for those who don't mind being chased by a fireball. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Expect interest to pique when a film from Amazon Studios based on the novel and starring Joaquin Phoenix opens in February. Phoenix won the Best Actor award at Cannes for his portrayal of Joe.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)