The Mitigator

by Samuel Colabufo

If you look up "mitigation" you get a simple definition: "Mitigation is the act of making something less severe, harmful, painful, or damaging." From the Latin, by way of Middle French, "to calm, soften, soothe," as in making a punishment less severe, or to reduce pain.

From there, we check out "mitigator," and what we'll find are products and services like:
- The Muddy Mitigator 2.0 is a popular wireless scouting camera used by hunters to capture and remotely transmit wildlife photos and videos.
- MITIGATOR is a specialized cybersecurity system designed to detect and automatically suppress distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) network attacks.
- The Mitigator TR1 is a mechanical damping device made by Valmont Structures to reduce the vertical vibration and movement of traffic signal mast arms.
- Mitigator Shop manufacture specialized metal guards and cages to protect dirt bike and motorcycle expansion pipes and brake components from crash damage.

Now imagine a main character named Joe Goodness, and that he can sense anger, impending pain, injury, violence. And that he has challenged himself with, well, with mitigating the damage about to be done by stepping up and taking it on with carefully honed skills in fighting, sleuthing, observing, and putting himself in the middle of the action.

The story opens as Joe, the mitigator, is observing a man at the counter of a corner store - he's angry, and both Joe and the Pakastani clerk know he's about to erupt. Joe tells us directly: "Violent encounters are simpler when you know they're coming."

Joe's prepared with an extendable titanium baton, and a gun - just in case.

We learn so much in one short (2 page) chapter: Joe is a straight-forward guy who knows his way around weapons; he can sense trouble coming because of a childhood trauma that taught him this life-saving, but mysterious power; he has in these 2 pages saved the lives of a couple of people; the author is a really good writer.

Joe has been shot in the confrontation, and as he recovers he meets a woman detective, Golley, who impresses Joe. In one subtle paragraph, the writer tells us that she is both pretty and smart: "To me, pretty is about the eyes. The rest can't be a train wreck, but it doesn't need to do much if the eyes carry the load.

"These were beauties. Pale blue. Almost transparent.

"She had to know what they did to people. Women with eyes like that usually do."

We learn that there is a nemesis in the mix, a William Kest, who is coming up for a parole hearing - and might have revenge against Joe on his mind.

We dig deeper into Joe's story and learn that his entire life is molded around his ability to sense anger, like the wind before a rainstorm turning the leaves, and that he lives a solitary, quiet life as compensation. 

Eventually, Joe learns that in little Syracuse, New York, there is a fairly large human smuggling/trafficking enterprise at work, and that the operations involve local big-wigs and entrepreneurs. And he becomes immersed in getting to the bottom of that, finding out what Kest has in mind for him, getting to know Golley in spite of the fact that she's put a tail on him, and making sure that he makes it out the other side of the adventure in one piece.

The action takes us all around Syracuse, and to such places as "Pebble Hill Manor", an upscale development in Manlius, the Saint Lawrence River, and the OCC campus. Syracusans will have fun envisioning the real places he refers to, and to figure out what the "hidden" reality of the fictitious place or person might be.

It's a good story. Joe is a likeable character, and a narrator who doesn't limit us as some first-person narrators do - we get a good "view" of the story as it unfolds. There are chapters, when the action is fast, where Colabufo has created a cinematic style of writing - a sentence, short, quick, active that is the equivalent of a shot as we watch the action racing along. In another chapter, he uses the same method to get us into Joe's mind as he has to quickly take stock and then take action:
"I climbed down and got out of there.
But something made me stop.
Something I saw.
Then it hit me.
Not something.
Everything.
I'd already seen it."

Colabufo takes the necessary time with descriptions and explication, so these staccato passages don't grow tiring, but rather change up the pace to indicate the urgency of the action or the thinking, and pull the reader rapidly through, leaving us anxious to keep going. 

And Joe, the character, really is a good hero - a man of action, a hint of the almost supernatural, and a humility and "goodness" that lives up to his name. 

A good, fast-paced action story with more than a surface knowledge of weapons, surveillance and investigative work - and for the Syracuse reader, an extra fun romp through your own home town!