A Sporting Death by Scott Blasingame

A Sporting Death by Scott Blasingame

Once more author Scott Blasingame brings his imcomparable knowledge of fight choreography in prose to the written page, giving us a story that pays homage to not only to Richard Connell's "The Hounds of Zaroff", but also to the cinematic adaptations that we saw during the 90s, like HARD TARGET; SURVIVING THE GAME; and others. Moreover, it also features nods to the underground martial arts tournament flicks that really hit their stride during the 90s, and still continue to this very day (see MAN OF TAI CHI for a particularly good example).

The premise is simple: The Hunter brothers are in Nocturnity (yes, the same city where Blasingame's NightDragon books are set) filming a martial arts action. Chance is the film's star, with his boyish good looks and powerful martial arts skills. Dare, his older brother, is an even better martial artist, although he contents himself to work as a stunt double and fight choreographer. One evening, a "chance" (ha!) meeting with an aptly-named femme fatale named Sindy puts Chance in the murderous hands of Bellamy Bellinger, a former boxer and mob enforcer who now stages human hunts and underground death matches for a very rich (yet shady) clientele. Chance and Dare had worked in Hong Kong action movies and Chance amassed a huge debt with the local triad. Now, to pay back his debt, he must fight in a death match or allow himself to be hunted. Instead, he "volunteers" his brother, who'll have to take on a team of experienced mercenary hunters who have never lost a hunt, if he wants to save his own skin, his brother, and his family, who might become collateral casualties if he doesn't play his cards right.

So this book was a lot of fun to read. The beginning chapters, are an interesting look at life on the set of a (presumably) low-budget action film and how life for a "gwailo" in the Hong Kong film scene might play out. Especially amusing for us HK cinephiles is the part where Blasingame starts naming off faux-Hong Kong film titles that sound like the sort of English titles that might be given to a foreign action film, but would never pass muster in Hollywood. The chemistry between the introverted Dare and the perky female blogger is especially good, making the story all the more compelling once the action begins.

Ah yes, the fighting. There's quite a lot of it, as to be expected in a Blasingame novel. At least two major set pieces--the playground fight and the huge warehouse showdown--feel like a Jackie Chan movie translated into prose, but with the level of bone-crunching violence you might expect in a Steven Seagal film. The later one-on-one battles are also expertly "choreographed" and I could only hope that Hong Kong will one day make the sort of film that is as fun to watch as these fights were fun to read. The mercenary killers have all sorts of fight tactics and weapons, including whips, throwing knives, axe handles, metal poles, and more. Fans of movie action will enjoy reading these sequences, no if's, and's, or but's about it.

And as the story progresses, it becomes clear that the closer Dare gets to finding his brother, the more he has at stake, and that winning the hunt may not be the great (if bloody) triumph that he was expecting. As we learn more about the villains, their motives and future plans, and steps they're taking to ensure that the hunters win, the more Blasingame is able to ratchet up the suspense. The last 70 pages or so of this story were real page turners. And with that in mind, I heartily recommend this book to all fans of action, suspense, martial arts, and the like. And if you don't find yourself belonging to any of those groups, shame on you. Buy this book and be converted!