24th February 2005, 8:20 PM
The only way it could be shockingly brutal, as you put it, is if the main character dies at a total anticlimax. That is, instead of his rival killing him, he dies because he jay walks.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)