Weekly Reader: Scarred by Damien Linnane; Inside The Tortured Scarred Mind of a Vigilante

 

Weekly Reader: Scarred by Damien Linnane; Inside The Tortured Scarred Mind of a Vigilante

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: Scarred by Damien Linnane is a fascinating and sometimes terrifying look into the mind of a vigilante. The book makes him if not always sympathetic, but understandable in his motives and  his bloody graphic journey interesting as we follow him.

Jason Ennis seems like a nice guy, if a bit eccentric. He volunteers at a soup kitchen and has a genuine repartee with the other volunteers and homeless. However, he favors wearing combat boots, army fatigues, and has a fascination with guns. He also has a night time hobby that takes up much of his time: He hunts down and kills people who commit abuse, sexual assault, and various other violent crimes.

Many of his nights are spent chasing and catching presators before he goes in for the literal kill. He wants to avenge those who have been injured by others and their abusers have gotten away with it. He envisions himself as a Judge Dredd type who upholds the law by breaking it.

Meanwhile as Jason stalks his prey, another killer, Howard Silverman, is on the loose hunting down, raping, and killing women for his sexual pleasure. The book becomes a three way hunt: Jason for his prey, Howard for his, and Detective Brandon Ames to catch both of them.

The book is not one of black and white, good vs. evil. It's more like light gray vs. a slightly darker shade of gray, bordering on evil vs. really evil. We are mesmerized by Jason's actions, even if we would question them in real life. 

What makes Jason so understandable is the care that Linnane does in analyzing his protagonist and why he acts as he does. Similar to Bruce Wayne before he became Batman, Jason has a motive for his murderous and violent actions. He himself has been a victim of physical and sexual abuse and one of the people he killed was the man who abused him. He stalks the night streets, sometimes catching men in the act of abusing wives or girlfriends on sight and shooting them. He also is methodical in his approach as he follows one potential assailant to his home and studies his actions before he strikes. He kills to protect others from being abused. Jason is a clearly scarred man and he wants to scar the world around him, so it's as wounded as he is.

Howard by contrast is not looked on with shades of gray. Similar to the show, Dexter, to make Jason look better in comparison, there has to be someone made to look worse. In this case, Howard is that person. Unlike Jason who has a motive for what he does, Howard is just drawn by his own desires to dominate and overpower women and others who are weaker than him. He is a foil for Jason and represents everything he despises. It's no wonder that the two are destined to encounter each other and that encounter would end fatally.

That however does not make Jason a hero by any stretch of the imagination.

There are many moments where Jason's actions are questionable even within the text. Many of the women and children that he saves are more frightened of him than they are of their abuser. When he kills a man that he perceives as a rapist, there is some doubt whether the man actually did commit rape or Jason misunderstood the encounter. When he rescues another woman, he develops an unhealthy attraction to her and she even visits him in prison, implying that his obssession with her will soon be as dangerous as the men he pursued. Jason clearly falls in the anti-hero category.

In fact the only actually heroic character the book offers is Ames. He is caught between catching the two killers, seeing one just as destructive as the other. He has a good detective instinct as he interviews suspects to identify Jason and Howard. He also abhors the publicity that the search is getting, like the press giving them catchy nicknames like "Corporal Punishment" (for Jason) and "Jack-Knife Joker" (for Howard) and concerned about copycat killers. A father, he wants to protect his daughter from the dangerous predators. Ames has the police officer outlook of what does and does not follow the law and acts accordingly. He doesn't see how or why the killer acts. He sees a killer. He is heroic but he lacks the nuances and depth that makes Jason so interesting. In fact, he is rather bland in comparison.

Damien Linnane shows us a scarred world and someone who survives in it by being more scarred. There isn't much healing. Instead there are hints that the scars will last a long time.