You Were Never Really Here
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4.2 • 5 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Now a major motion picture starring Joaquin Phoenix, You Were Never Really Here is a gritty, harrowing story of corruption and one man's violent quest for vengeance.
Joe has witnessed things that cannot be erased. A former FBI agent and Marine, his abusive childhood has left him damaged beyond repair. He has completely withdrawn from the world and earns his living rescuing girls who have been kidnapped into the sex trade.
When he's hired to save the daughter of a corrupt New York senator held captive at a Manhattan brothel, he stumbles into a dangerous web of conspiracy, and he pays the price. As Joe's small web of associates are picked off one by one, he realizes that he has no choice but to take the fight to the men who want him dead.
Brutal and redemptive in equal measure, You Were Never Really Here is a toxic shot of a thriller, laced with corruption, revenge and the darkest of inner demons.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
