A Book Review - Hit and Run by R.L. Stine (Point Horror)

I don't always check the authors on Point Horror books, particularly ones that have been in my possession for a long time. (Many of these date back to 1991 - 1994.) Other times I glance at the author and all that registers is that it's one of the 'usual' ones - Diane Hoh, Richie Tankersley Cusick, R.L. Stine, Carol Ellis, Sinclair Smith, Caroline B. Cooney et al - but I don't quite register which one. (That's not entirely true; I almost always register Caroline B. Cooney. I have a passion for Cooney, even at 28.)

Anyway, I picked up Hit and Run when I was half asleep earlier, read the first couple chapters and thought, this must be a Stine.

We have, in this book, a typical mediocre-Stine (as opposed to great-Stine) group of "best friends" who don't really seem to like each other at all - the ringleader (Winks), the follower (Scott), the girl who knows that it's wrong but laughs anyway (Cassie) and the one who's mercilessly and passive-aggressively abused (Eddie). The group like to play practical jokes on Eddie, knowing that he hates them, and managing, in that way that the best (and I use that term loosely) bullies do, to make Eddie look and feel like the bad guy / spoilsport if he doesn't stand there and take it. Then one night they borrow a parent's car and go out to practise their driving (none have licenses) and Eddie hits and kills a man.

Naturally they decide to leave the body and run away, because that's what teenagers always do, right? No moral compasses, any of them. #sarcasm

You know what happens next. Threatening notes, supposedly from the dead guy. One of them gets hit by a car and ends up in hospital, etc. It's been done before, several times - most memorably in Lois Duncan's I Know What You Did Last Summer, a book I read in grade school half a dozen years before they mutilated it and reformed it into a slasher movie.

This book was such a slog for me. Usually even two-star books have redeeming points. I did manage to read this from start to finish, so I can't justify giving it one star, but then I'm not sure I've ever come across a one-star book. There were a few lines here that made me chuckle, but the majority of it was more teeth-grinding than funny or scary. The first thing I really disliked was, as I mentioned, the way these "friends" treat Eddie. The second thing was the whole hiding-a-murder plot. Horror and suspense books only really work when you can empathise with the protagonists and pull for them to get out of their bad situation, right? Yet with characters like this, even if they come through without getting hurt and everything's fine and dandy at the end - it's not, not really, because you (and your closest friends) are still that guy who would accidentally kill someone and then never own up to it. Occasionally - and I do mean occasionally - an author can create characters who are simpatico enough that you root for them despite their heinous wrongdoings. Duncan did. Stine did not. If these guys had all ended up in hospital after getting run down, I wouldn't have cared in the slightest.

Thirdly, some of the activities here just push the boundaries of taste and socially acceptable behaviour way beyond their limits. Sorry for spoilers, but - carrying a corpse around for shits and giggles. Yes, really. I'm not the squeamish type - I'm an ex premed student who has real (ancient) bones in her house that come out for Halloween, and would be entirely happy to have people do the same with mine in a century or two - but even I find some things unacceptable, and the idea that a bunch of teenagers would quite literally play with a rotting corpse, one who presumably had NOT donated his body to medical science or teenage amusement, leaves a really nasty taste in my mouth. Even worse, not one of them seems to realise that this is not okay. Stine is well-known for including scenes of violence and ickiness, but at least it's usually not quite so gratuitous.

Verdict: Yuck on all levels. My kids will not be reading this one.