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A Visceral Story
The Reckoning of Jason is a harrowing thriller about a grieving father-turned-hitman who uncovers he’s been a pawn in a far more personal and devastating game than he ever realized. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
My main inspiration for this story was my desire to see the typical ‘bad guy’ character win.
Instead of hating the bad guy, I wanted the readers to connect, understand and sympathise with the character of Jason. To feel that Jason’s justifications were the right thing to do.
Jason’s emotional and moral unraveling feels incredibly visceral. Was there a particular process or personal experience that helped you shape his descent?
When writing a visceral story, I embody each character’s personality separately. I begin by writing the complete story from Jason’s perspective before moving on to the secondary and tertiary characters.
I like to draw each character’s intense psychological aspects thoroughly before creating unexpected twists that catch readers off guard.
I like my readers to be completely immersed in the story, hanging on every word.
What drives me is the feeling of pulling someone into a world they can’t look away from, a world that stays with them long after the last page.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
The central theme I wanted to cover in this book was how everyone can be one bad situation away from losing everything. How your life can unravel and turn you into someone you don’t recognise instantly, through no fault of your own.
I also wanted to cover loss in its many forms and how grief can control and take over every aspect of your life, from the loss of a person to the loss of a job or the loss of what you imagined your life would be. The heightened extremes of emotions that are felt are transformative.
What is the next book that you are working on, and when will it be available?
I have recently published a book called The Witch’s Name, which is based on a woman who was killed as a witch during the English witch trials in 1561. This is out now.
The past never truly dies… especially when it shares your name.
Ursula Southeil, a university student researching the English witch trials, never expected her work to feel so personal. But when she stumbles upon a centuries-old diary detailing the brutal torture of a suspected witch who shares her name—and her physical deformity—she is compelled to find out more.
Is too much knowledge a good thing?
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Dark, brutal, and relentless, The Reckoning of Jason is a psychological thriller that explores morality, vengeance, and the consequences of one’s actions.
The Reckoning of Jason
Tina Wingham’s The Reckoning of Jason is a gritty, unflinching plunge into the mind of a broken man teetering on the edge of sanity. At its heart, it’s a story about grief, violence, and the thin, blurred line between justice and vengeance. Jason, once a loving husband and father, is consumed by the death of his daughter and the collapse of his family. What begins as sorrow slowly rots into something darker. He becomes a hitman, dealing in blood and pain, until a contract forces him to face a devastating truth that he’s been a weapon in someone else’s game.
The prologue paints this tender, golden scene of Jason splashing around with his wife and daughter, and then the rest of the book rips it all away like a storm through glass. The tonal shift is brutal and effective. That opening chapter, when Jason is alone in his crumbling apartment, haunted by Lily’s memory and Emily’s departure, it’s raw and beautifully ugly. The way Wingham describes the smell of “dust, gun oil, and the faint remnants of whiskey” paints more than just a room. It’s a portrait of grief made physical. I felt suffocated just reading it.
And then there’s the violence. It’s not just graphic, it’s meticulous, clinical, even poetic in its monstrosity. The torture scenes with Ted Monroe made my stomach knot. Page after page, Wingham doesn’t flinch, and neither does Jason. One moment that stuck with me was when Jason presses his thumbs into a man’s eyes in an alley not out of rage, but because it “felt like the right thing to do.” That’s the kind of moral vacuum the book thrives in. And what’s wild is that it never feels gratuitous. It feels… honest. Ugly, disturbing, but honest.
What surprised me most was how The Reckoning of Jason turns itself inside out in the last act. When Jason realizes he was manipulated, the book takes on this sudden weight. The revenge is sadistic but also strangely justified in the warped world Wingham builds. The scold’s bridle, the rats, the blowtorch, it’s all medieval and horrific, but it’s laced with this cold clarity. Wingham doesn’t just show a monster; she lets you watch as that monster realizes he’s been someone else’s tool. The moment Jason mutters, “This wasn’t just a contract. This was personal,” I got chills. It’s that shift from killer-for-hire to grim executioner that sets this book apart.
In the end, this novel left me a little numb, a little shaken, but it stuck with me. It’s not for the faint of heart; the gore gets intense, but it’s also not mindless. It’s a slow dive into moral decay and grief so deep it turns a man into a myth. I’d recommend The Reckoning of Jason to anyone who likes their thrillers gritty, their characters broken, and their villains not so easily defined.
Pages: 89 | ISBN: 1764079205
LITERARY TITAN 