Queer Reads: Onley James
Recommendation #18 brings us my favorite morally gray protagonists.
Onley James’s Necessary Evils is about a family of vigilante psychopaths who murder terrible people in the name of justice. Think Batman except with way more gay sex and fewer morals. Also, the villains aren’t supervillains, they’re just horrible people who slip through the cracks of the justice system.
Preceding the Necessary Evils books are two other series: Elite Protection Services, about a company of bodyguards who have the unprofessional tendency to fall for their charges (it’s romance, so that’s part of the genre), and Time Served, which is a trilogy about ex-cons. Following the Necessary Evils books are two more series: Jericho’s Boys, which follow characters you meet in Book 3 of the Necessary Evils books, and The Watch, which is about a secret government project where they train assassins.
It seems like for each of these books, James thought “What is the worst thing people do and how can they suffer and die for it?” The villains in these books do things like human trafficking, child molestation, and serial killing. It’s very cathartic to see these guys pay for these crimes, especially knowing that these are real problems in the real world where far too many people do not pay for their crimes. Like seriously, human trafficking is a huge problem. Modern day slavery is happening and thriving, and it’s very satisfying to imagine the perpetrators of such things being taken down by vigilante killers.
Everything Onley James writes is dark, and definitely read your trigger warnings, because she doesn’t pull any punches. But that’s balanced out with dark humor, lovable characters, and very well written spice.
