The Possession of Jessica Young By Russ Martin

The Possession of Jessica Young
By Russ Martin
1982 Tor Books
Paperback, 316 pages

                Russ Martin is back with another Satanic mind-control saga, the first one for Tor Books. Tor picked up the slack from Playboy Press who had just been sold. This one is another male wish-fulfillment fantasy if the male happens to be a total misogynistic asshole weakling.

 

                The book opens with Jessica Young, a whip-smart and beautiful woman, who has broken free from her captors. Among her credentials, she has psychic abilities. The story is told in chapters from “Then” and “Now”, unraveling a sordid tale of sexual abuse, degradation, betrayal, slavery and greed. Jessica’s captor is one Stephen Abbott, a rich, good-looking man who holds a prominent position in The Organization. His boss? It seems to be Old Scratch himself.

 

                Jessica’s escape from Abbott’s clutches are but a bump in the road for The Organization who are looking to steal her powers for the great good of mankind and Satan. Read that as MAN-kind. Abbott and his male cronies own their women. Maids, slaves and sex toys. In order to find the missing Jessica, Abbott seduces her 17-year-old sister Heather to help find her in Los Angeles. Jessica has a cop friend that she has been seeing so she seems safe. But is she?

 

                Jessica is a good character; a smart woman who can easily take care of herself. It is therefore very uncomfortable to watch her be reduced to a family-murdering trophy by Abbott in the “Then” chapters. Admittedly, I cringed quite a lot watching her, and later her sister with her teenage “boyfriend”, getting used and abused. I’m not comfortable with rapey scenes and this book has many.

 

                That said, Martin (whoever he really is) weaves a compelling story throughout, with the flashbacks and current scenes keeping the pages turning, hoping to see Jessica decimate her adversaries. This is a much more uncomfortable narrative than some of his other books with a similar subject matter. The cringe-factor is high, unless you really are a weakling man who needs to see women “put in their place”. It makes you wonder what kind of person Martin was (is?). This appears to be the first in a kind of trilogy that use some of these same characters. On deck is The Obsession of Sally Wing.