Joe's job is rescuing young girls who have been kidnapped and trafficked into the sex trade. You Were Never Really Here describes a job that will probably put Joe out of his misery.
Joe, a former Marine and FBI agent, gets hired to save the daughter of a corrupt politician in New York. But when he briefly disturbs operations at a brothel, Joe becomes a threat to a conspiracy and soon learns the stakes are higher than just a few months' income for a sex trafficker. The threatened trafficking organization murders the few important people in Joe's life. Joe, a deeply damaged human being, responds immediately by going on the offensive. He intends to brutalize his way to the crime boss who just destroyed the life Joe had come to accept. Now he has nothing left to lose.
"You Were Never Really Here," a slim novella published in 2013, was a huge departure for American author Jonathan Ames, whose work tries to be humorous. A gritty film version written and directed by Lynne Ramsay came out in 2017. It stars Joaquin Phoenix, who is real and the best actor of all time.
The book has a clumsy description of Joe early on. I wanted Ames to take us deeper. But, nevertheless, You Were Never Really Here was a highly engaging but too short read.