Reading Dirk’s book is kind of like watching 24’s Jack Bauer stumble into the middle of a Philip K. Dick novel like A Scanner Darkly – only shot as a porno film. It’s like an animated film version of Hesse’s Steppenwolf created using the engine from Everquest II, or maybe a season of Dawson’s Creek re-shot so that The Punisher was a main character and all four of the kids were constantly on X. Or, to put it another way, the protagonist/narrator of Hunter is an awesome badass killer trapped in a reality so distorted that his impressive suite of skills don’t matter most of the time.

The plot of the book is simple: Hunter (he knows no other name) is a dedicated cyborg-assassin and who works for a corporation with a contract to “euthanize” aging welfare recipients. He has absolutely no moral problems with this. In fact, he strongly feels that he’s doing his targets a favor, as their state of dependency upon society and lack of productivity deprives their existence of meaning. (Hunter has a refreshing sense of moral clarity. Demented, but refreshing.) It’s only when he begins to realize that several of his targets are, in fact, productive citizens that Hunter’s faith in his mission begins to waiver.

FWTD:Hunter is never boring. In 263 pages of reading, I never got the urge to put it down and read something else. Now, I was educated Anglican, which means that I know boring novels like a whore knows the back of her pimp’s hand. Dirk’s novel is never tedious, never dull. Sure, it’s a first person coming-of-age novel with all of the themes typical for such an undertaking. But some of the greatest novels in world literature are part of that genre: Celine’s Death On The Installment Plan, Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird to name but a few. So FWTD: Hunter is in extremely good company, stylistically speaking.

In conclusion, I enjoyed reading FWTD: Hunter. It was certainly worth the US 11.95 plus shipping it cost. With that said, this book isn’t for everyone. You need to be a fan SciFi/Post Apocalyptic/Action fiction to appreciate Dirk’s book. It also helps if you’re not too squeamish when it comes to extreme violence, sexual deviancy, and general existential malaise (from the setting, not the narrator). While he hasn’t entirely found his author’s voice yet, Dirk’s book is better than half of the crap you’ll find in the SciFi/Fantasy section of Boarders. The novel never pulls its punches, never cowers in the face of darkness, and never compromises.