The 10th Victim by Robert Sheckley is actually a novelization of the Italian film of the same name, which is in turn a film adaptation of the short story "The Seventh Victim," which was also written by Robert Sheckley. Considering that Sheckley has no screenwriting credits attached to the film (and the film has five screenwriting credits!), just a "Story by" acknowledgement, it's hard to pinpoint where most of the content in this novel originates. I can say, however, that having seen the film before reading the book, I found the book much more entertaining, and with many scenes from the film not appearing in the novelization, I'm willing to give Sheckley full credit.

Besides all of that, The 10th Victim is a wacky little farce that takes place in a future where international war has been eliminated through the application of "The Hunt," a voluntary assassination game in which contestants are designated alternately as Hunters and Victims until they are killed or survive ten rounds. The main characters are attractive sociopath Caroline and handsome apathetic Marcello, both of whom are on their tenth round of The Hunt. Caroline is now the Hunter, and she has drawn Marcello as her Victim. Is this relationship doomed from the start?

Sheckley handles this tale of government-assisted homicide with a playfully tongue-in-cheek style that makes a morbidly fun read out of what has the potential for sci-fi moral posturing. The ending was a little bizarre and felt like a false stop, but considering that this isn't a book that begs to be taken seriously, it's a minor sin that can be forgiven. There are two more books after this in the "Victim" trilogy that I have yet to read, and I am definitely curious if the tone changes throughout. ( )

At least it was short, which seemed to be it's only redeeming quality. Not much action or humor and the characters were annoying. ( )

http://speculiction.blogspot.sk/2015/11/review-of-tenth-victim-by-robert.html ( )

The Tenth Victim is a very funny book. It is intentionally so. Sheckley has his tongue so firmly stuck in his cheek here it must have hurt him to talk for weeks after writing this. It's a short book hardly more than a novella really and I read it one sitting but packs more absurdity and wit into its 116 pages than most writers get into a thousand page trilogy.

The premise is simple. War has been abolished; people got fed up with it. In its place those individuals who need to express their violent nature sign up for the Hunt: a game to the death where individuals are paired up as hunter and hunted and allowed to legally kill each other on sight.

The absurdity of this notion is underscored again and again. In one incident a beautiful young girl is 'chopped down' in a hail of machine gun fire and her killer is issued with a parking ticket for having blocked the traffic. When the killer complains to the cop, the cop points out that if the girl had avoided the attack and managed to kill her assailant he wouldn't have had to pay the parking fine - but she would have got a ticket as she was jaywalking at the time.

The 'casual racism' complained about by another reviewer is far from casual. It's very calculated and part of a set up for a funny little joke. For several pages the Chinese assassin is referred to by just about every pulp Chinese cliché going: 'Yellow Peril', 'Son of Han', 'Chink' - only in the end for someone to think he's Japanese! The racism here isn't the author's; it's the characters'.

Don't try to make sense of this book. It's a mid-sixties High Camp classic. It's the sort of book Philip K Dick would have written if he hadn't worried about stuff so much. ( )

Let me take two sentences from the first chapter of this book to illustrate all you need to know about it:

'"Sank you, I am so preased" the Yellow Devil replied politely'

'Caroline's was a more practical garment than the archetypical brassiere of yore, for as she faced the startled Hunter each breast piece fired a single shot'

I think I should probably end my review there. Several more paragraphs about the lazy writing, casual racism and the utter impracticality of Breast Guns won't make the point any more clearly.

Why I read it: I am very into the Hunger Games at the moment, and this was mentioned to me as an earlier example of the genre. It's not, quite - in the Hunger Games the players are all unwilling, whereas in the 10th Victim everyone has volunteered to play. And in the Hunger Games the games are these huge set piece once a year, whereas in the 10th Victim they are always on-going as a constant background to daily life. [Also, in the Hunger Games, there are characters with motives that make some sense and have some personality :-p ]

Things I hated: If there was ever a book that one could call pulp fiction, this is it. It doesn't really make any sense at all if you think about any bit of it too much. And it suffers very much from being of its time, and steeped in weird mysogyny and racism. I mean, what sort of plot is 'an incredably beautiful woman is assigned to kill a (as far as I could tell) very dull man, falls in love with him based on two (dull) conversations, and so forces him to marry her at gunpoint'? And the, to quote 'extremely attactive woman, if you liked the type, which could best be described as homicidal schizophrenic paranoid with kittenish overtones', who makes up the other side of the triangle and has been strung along for 12 years (and is then dropped like a hot potato when he actually leaves his wife) and exists only to make a Dramatic Finale, is hardly a sensitive portrayal of mental health issues ;-)

Things I, OK, actually quite liked: I am clearly overthinking this book. It is a pageturning yomp, and has some amusingly silly bits in it. It is hilarious to see how 1970s the future in this book is. The bit where they're using CB radio, and you know the computer is Powerful because it is Giant are particularly fine examples. And it is interesting to see such a completely different take on 'a game where you might die' - in comparison Hunger Games seems utterly melodramatic and angsty, whereas at no point in this book do either of the two protagonists playing the game seem in the slightest bit affected by it - it is entirely a silly game to them.

To sum up 'Like Heinlein at his worst'. ( )