A Hard Way to Die: Three Novellas

Matt Hartman is a freelance editor and cataloguer, running Hartman Cataloguing, Editing and Indexing Services.

The three novellas in this book display abundant verve but a
corresponding lack of skill. Hewitt’s style is to ramble on with his
story, piling incident on incident, while ignoring such niceties as
characterization, dialogue, and plot nuances. The title story is
basically one of revenge. A father and an uncle track down a biker gang
called Satan’s Servants. Gang members have such clichéd names as
Sonny Barker, Black, Morrow, Big Al, and Beanie. Morrow, Hewitt writes,
“took his name from ‘tomorrow’ because business could always
wait.” Barker is the leader, a “beefy, muscular man, in his
mid-40’s, with the beginnings of a beer belly that he didn’t try to
hide.” The Servants are responsible for the death of Cassandra, the
young daughter of Charles Band and his wife, Tricia.

In “Hunter,” the second story, a group of hunters on an African
safari are stalked and attacked by a group of anthropomorphized hyenas:
“They were many,” thinks the leader of the large pack. “And the
men-things were so few.” This story is a credit, if anything, to
Hewitt’s evident delight in the macabre, as first animals and then
people are attacked, killed, and eaten.

“Dictum,” is the story of an ex-con released into a not-so-nice
world. Its characters are pure caricatures. A man is “built like a
bulldog with a bad-ass crew cut and a scar above his left eye he took
some years back while fulfilling a contract.” Another has hair “that
looks artificially black, as if it’s been dyed too much for his age
... with deep grooves in his leathery skin and furrows in his forehead
that make it look like he’s lived a hard life.” Hewitt must learn to
tone down his style and use language for more than merely exposition.