A highly-engaging drama, elevated by its supernatural backdrop!
Marcus Alexander Hart’s latest novel is an engaging read from beginning to end, and expands his resume in all the best ways.
Having read Hart’s previous works, all of which leaned heavily on the comedy, I had expected more of the same (and not in bad way) with “One Must Kill Another.” Instead, I was treated to the engrossing drama of a very dysfunctional family; a story told through the shared point-of-view of its protagonists, as well as a series of effective flashbacks. Don’t get me wrong, there are plentiful moments of levity, but the humor still (mostly) takes a backseat to surprising gravitas, and soon enough, horror.
About the protagonists: Hart demonstrates right from the get-go that these are flawed individuals, who are alternately sympathetic, unlikable, pitiable, close to hate-able, then back sympathetic, and around again they go — in other words, characters who feel very human. Even when they’re turning your stomach, you understand their motivations; you might not approve of those motivations, but you understand them.
The story remains with the real-world family hardship for the first act ... and then everything takes a sudden dark turn, a supernatural quality that, again, offers touches of Hart’s familiar humor, but keeps the jokes situational rather than tonal — funny character traits or commentary, even as the setting gets creepy as hell.
My one nag — though it wasn’t enough to detract from the overall 5 stars this book deserves — was that the characters’ apologizing sometimes got redundant: They do something wrong, perhaps make a terrible mistake, and apologize profusely, again and again ... but even that still chalks itself up to the character’s human qualities; if I had been in any of those given situations, I would almost certainly be falling over myself to apologize each time, too.
In the end, the biggest compliment I can give this book is: I could not put it down. I am not a fast reader, but I consumed this book in just over two days, to the point of neglecting other tasks on my to-do list, just so I could see how it all ended.
And “One Must Kill Another” ends very well. As Hart has done before, he manages to take many loose threads, hints that you didn’t even realize were hints, and tie them together in a neat, satisfying package, with a healthy epilogue that is the gratifying bow on top.
If you enjoy horror-dramas — that also manage not to take themselves too seriously — I highly recommend “One Must Kill Another.”