7 Steps to Midnight

It appears that the movie, “The Game” starring Michael Douglas and Sean Penn is loosely based on this book (though I don’t recall seeing such an attribution and the story setting in The Game involves a banker and his brother).

Having seen the visually stunning and quite movingly made movie “What Dreams may come” based on Matheson’s novel, I had high hopes for “7 steps”. I have to admit that on the literary quality, this book is an utter failure. It is full of breathless italics designed to create tension without serving that purpose. On every second page, the protagonist on the run keeps talking to himself (about the same thing, repetitiously) and exclaiming, “Oh Shut Up!” I lost count of the number of “Oh God!”, “God Almighty!” and “Jesus Christ!” (I groaned every time the mathematician groaned). While the idea is very good, the writing leaves a lot to be desired, and you can see the conclusion coming a mile away.