A typical Tuesday morning begins with an embittered, mentally ill man making his way to do his weekly shopping. Everything seems normal, even his gross abuse of everyone around him especially including the store manager, when the day crashes down with the entrance of organized criminals intent on the heist. As the robbery begins to spin out of control and violence ensues, our nameless hero rises to the occasion to do what must be done to save himself and incidentally, others. Although he saves the day the actions leave him mentally crushed, incapacitated, and unconscious. Tony Kincaid is a skilled detective who puts the good of the many above the needs of the few including his own family. He is driven to discover this hero's identity and bring the men to justice who would victimize a young woman. Richard is a struggling reporter whose own bouts with depression, indulgence, and self-medication fuel a desire to report stories that will be uplifting. When Tony tells him of the nameless hero, Richard decides this could be the story to impress his boss, drive his readership and save his job. Tony's wife, Trudy, has grown increasingly sick of Tony's loyalty to his drunkard, slovenly friend. She loves Tony deeply, but knows that Tony is loyal to a fault, struggling to be the man of true virtue whose concerns of loyalty, love and true friendship are central to his self-identity. Trudy knows that it is time for Tony to put his family first and cut out the cancerous leech, named Richard. In spite of Trudy's objections and pleading, Tony simply cannot abandon his friend as he struggles, although admittedly, the struggle never seems to end with Richard. Together, Richard and Tony seek to identify this unknown hero but as the investigation moves forward it quickly snowballs into a debacle of circumstance and poor judgement. In the end, it will be this that will put Tony and everyone he loves to an unrelenting test. Justifiable Herocide is an exercise in perspective within a classic crime novel while critically analyzing the classical Hero Archetype. The traits of heroism are explored while questioning the need for the hero to be all of the characteristics most often deemed necessary to be called, Hero. Each character represents aspects of the Hero archetype but intentionally incomplete. Tony is the virtuous, loving, dutiful man whose idea of a good person, inside the societal construct, clouds his judgment and threatens to collapse his own place within it. The character of Richard challenges the idea that people with emotional or substance issues are incapable of heroic acts or that one must be wholesome in order to be a good person. Trudy is the wise benevolent mother, who attempts to temper Tony's overt idealism and challenge his philosophies of the socially construct, including good friendship, fatherhood, manliness, and finally heroism. By contrast the unknown hero of the grocery store robbery, forces the reader to ask themselves the question of whether a vitriolic person who saves others while motivated only to save themselves constitutes an actual heroic action. Is intention a necessary component of heroism?