()
Josephus 'Jaycee' Stark, a battle-hardened veteran of the Iraq War, stands at the center of a media firestorm after being acquitted of a gruesome fourteen-person massacre in Georgetown, Ohio. While the public and a grieving community view him as a cold-blooded monster who escaped justice, journalist Tracy Cleaver and jury foreman Leonard Miles begin to uncover a more unsettling truth. Stark, haunted by the 'moral injury' of his service in Mosul and the tragic story of his comrade Jackson, has intentionally cultivated the persona of a killer, using his journals to frame himself for crimes he didn't commit as a form of psychological penance. As Tracy and Leonard race to reconcile conflicting forensic evidence with Stark's clinical confessions, they discover a man seeking punishment for the trauma he cannot escape. This psychological thriller explores the thin line between victim and predator, the lasting scars of war, and the terrifying reality that while a broken man seeks his own execution, a true killer remains at large in the shadows of a small town. Comparable works include American Sniper