The Man Butcher Prize


Fiction - Action
351 Pages
Reviewed on 02/13/2023
Buy on Amazon

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    Book Review

Reviewed by Vincent Dublado for Readers' Favorite

The Man Butcher Prize by Charles X. Cross is a thrilling and hypnotic story filled with style and vision. While all the fictional assassins that will pop up in your head live in the contemporary period, you are introduced to William of Fairshore, a.k.a. The Masquerade Killer, who is the top assassin during the 1600s. It has taken him years of dedication and skill to live up to his reputation but only one botched job to ruin him and get him blacklisted from the assassins' guild. He killed the wrong man, and not just any ordinary wrong man. Nobody will deal with William after he kills the Mayor of Fairshore. His only ticket to redemption is the Man Butcher prize, a competition held every two years that pits the best assassins in the land, and this year’s contest requires participants to have a sponsor to encourage returning champions. William’s mentor, Ojo Azul, returns to make the competition even deadlier.

In the tradition of John Wick, Femme Fatale, and The Professional, The Man Butcher Prize is no mindless action novel written just to give shock value to blood and body count. Charles X. Cross makes it run deeper than that. He has created a three-dimensional hitman with a unique persona and stylish bravado so that you will care enough to understand the nature of what he does. William sets the bar high for what an antihero protagonist should be, and his adventure becomes a work of fiction that is blissfully entertaining to read. The setting, which throws you back a few hundred years, makes it even more inspiring, and the circumstance where William meets his long-lost mentor once again yields plenty of tension and meat for the storyline. If you plan to read an action novel, this is the one you should pick.