Gun to a Knife Fight by Jon Hunt

DanWeatherly

2 out of 2 users found this review helpful

Other reviews by DanWeatherly

"A little weak, but getting better"

Gun to a Knife Fight is an interesting read. It's flawed, but it shows a lot of promise. A self-proclaimed noir novel, it follows a gritty private investigator who consults for the the police on an apparent murder-suicide that becomes linked to something larger and more sinister.

Much of the writing is dialogue. Anything more than a cursory description of the settings is rare, and that makes it hard to get sucked into the world of Detective Jacoby Stone. Often, all you have to go on to make the events play out vividly in your mind is...people talking.

The story suffers from some pacing issues. It's slow to start, although that time is used to wisely develop the characters. Once the story picks up, however, it moves too quickly, eliminating cooling-off scenes between important events. The beginning of the narrative is mostly smooth, and as it progresses it becomes jarring.

What frustrated me the most was the writer's frequent and unpredictable shifts in verb tenses. Often, sequences of events within the same paragraph will happen and be said to have happened...even though they all took place in the order in which they were described. But the writer did include a little disclaimer to say that he understands he's made some grammatical errors that he will eventually fix. I just hope he gets to those first!

The actual crimes at the center of the plot are interesting. It's difficult to be shocking and original when television is so saturated with cunning, depraved serial killers, but the murders in Gun to a Knife Fight are believably horrific and interesting enough to make me want to find out more about them.

The good news, I suppose, is that Gun to a Knife Fight appears to be heavily plot-driven and the plot is hands-down its strongest point. It's far from the best piece of web fiction I've read, but it offers just enough to keep me reading. There's a lot of potential here. It may turn out to be pretty damn good.

Rating: 4 / 10