Aside from Brian Horeck’s Minnow Trap, this is by far the worst ‘novel’ I’ve ever read. Consequently, also one of the funniest. You will laugh until you scream, this is so, so bad.

Rosellen Price, you should be ashamed of yourself. You cannot write. Please, for the love of God, stop. Just stop.

It may be both inaccurate and unfair to label Richard Matheson’s novel 7 STEPS TO MIDNIGHT as a post-traumatic sufferer of Shyamalan’s Curse. Inaccurate, because STEPS was written and published years before M. Night Shyamalan released his trend-setting thriller THE SIXTH SENSE. Unfair, because it may lend the impression that Matheson ripped off Shyamalan’s penchant for last-act twists in the narrative.

Nevertheless, the comparison, while admittedly strained, proves accurate when one bothers to read STEPS. Because as much as one may want to enjoy a novel by the author of I AM LEGEND and HELL HOUSE on its own merits, our culture has been hijacked by Shyamalan’s Curse, and we all now have to suffer.

Not to say that Shyamalan’s films lack any merit. Indeed, SIXTH SENSE is a dark and moody character piece, and his companion films UNBREAKABLE and SIGNS show the same sure hand in balancing character development and atmosphere with plot shenanigans, ensuring that the now-standard Shyamalan plot twists are rooted in characters the audience cares about.

Sadly, despite the inarguable talent that lies behind those films, the main cultural offshoot, in Hollywood anyway, is the `surprising’ twist at the end, forgetting that Shyamalan took care in laying the groundwork beforehand. Now, we are inundated with lame-brained `thrillers’ like GODSEND, THE SKELETON KEY, and HIDE AND SEEK, films that assume that a late-act left-turn will distract the audience from the fact that the films as a whole are fairly poor. Even Shyamalan is not immune; his last film, THE VILLAGE, was weakly written, silly, and had a surprise ending you could see coming from the moment the opening credits rolled.

So by today’s standards, Matheson’s novel is too obvious by half. And what is worse, from a writer of Matheson’s stature and prestige, a novel as poor as 7 STEPS TO MIDNIGHT is cause for grief.

The plot starts off strongly enough, with befuddled mathematician Chris Barton leaving his mysterious job for home. Along the way, he picks up a hitchhiker, who warns that Barton’s grasp on reality may be on the verge of serious slippage. Getting home, he finds that another man, also named Chris Barton, now occupies his house, and the real Barton has appeared to have been replaced. Taken into custody, he finds himself on the run, living a nightmare where little makes sense.

So far, so good. While the story may not be riveting, at least the reader is still interested. If not up to par with his earlier work, there are possibilities to work with. Perhaps STEPS will be a tale akin to Matheson’s scripts for THE TWILIGHT ZONE, or perhaps Barton will begin flipping his way through multiple dimensions ala Robert A. Heinlein’s enjoyable if preachy JOB: A COMEDY OF JUSTICE. Maybe the whole tale will become an exercise in insanity, a trek into the netherworld of the subconscious, such as in L. Ron Hubbard’s FEAR (incidentally, the only novel Hubbard ever wrote that truly deserves far more than its current cult status).

Yet it quickly becomes apparent that Matheson has less on his mind than an examination into the self, and is more concerned with getting Barton from Point A to Points B, C, D, and E as rapidly as possible. As Barton meets strangers who utter nonsensical instructions, assassins who are unable to kill him, and an alluring spy who is the embodiment of every Hitchcockian cliché of the femme fatale, it becomes rapidly apparent that Matheson is not interested in making STEPS his version of Franz Kafka’s THE TRIAL, and more interested in just keeping things moving.

Granted, he does all this well enough. For all its facile and disappointing nature, it is a far more entertaining chase novel than, say, anything Dan Brown has ever produced. But keeping the audience confused is not enough, something Brown, for all his unearned success, has never learned; there has to be something to care about, a character to empathize with, a tendril of realism the reader can cling to. Matheson provides nothing of the sort, mistaking action for plot development, and surprise twists, for mystery, ending with a revelation so obvious and silly that it actually hurts.

Coming from Matheson, this is remarkably poor. In I AM LEGEND, he turned the vampire legend on its ear, giving us horror with bite, and ending with one of the most haunting denouements in modern literature. THE INCREDIBLE SHRIKING MAN gave us humanity at a sub-atomic level. WHAT DREAMS MAY COME found pathos and redemption in the bowels of Hell itself.

7 STEPS TO MIDNIGHT is not a novel, it’s a B-movie, with nothing on its mind but movement. Coming from Dan Brown, it would be a step up. Coming from Richard Matheson, it is a cheat.

Martin Amis, in his wonderfully strange novel The Information, hit upon one of the most memorable conceits in recent literature; a novelist, struggling with personal inadequacies and professional jealousies, releases what may very well be the worst novel ever written. So awful it causes spontaneous nosebleeds to whomever so much as glances at its opening pages, the novel becomes the albatross around the author’s neck, as he vainly attempts to sell the work at a series of poorly-attended readings and publishing expos.

Of course, the novel in question is awful because of the author’s stylistic choices, the novel’s pretentiousness, its affectation of being a ‘major’ work of literature. No one in The Information ever questions that the novel follows the basic codes of grammatical conduct, except where stylistic flourishes may demand. The novel may be badly written, but it is over-written: it is not incompetent, just completely unreadable.

Where is this meandering foreword headed? The novel doesn’t exist, after all. But if it did, it would still be a sight better than Brian Horeck’s Minnow Trap.

The author takes steps on his website (www.minnowtrap.ca) to brag about his business acumen when it comes to promotion of his self-published novel. Horeck claims to have sold over 16,000 copies, which, according to publishing standards, makes Minnow Trap a Canadian best-seller three times over (although a regional best-seller, not national). Granted, he has given many copies away for free at book expos and the like—which is how the cursed manuscript fell into my unsuspecting hands to begin with—but if he has sold even 10,000, it is a substantial accomplishment.

So the problem, then, is not one of promotion. Indeed, Horeck should be praised as an example of what author’s can achieve if they put their minds to it. Horeck wrote a book, published it himself, put up posters and displays, rented billboards, sold on commission, did public readings, and it appears to have worked. Many terrible novels have sold based solely on promotion, and Minnow Trap is no different.

The problem is, Minnow Trap is not merely a terrible novel; if that were the least of its crimes, it could be safely thrown away into the Goodwill bin. No, Minnow Trap’s crime is more insidious. It is not simply a terrible novel; it is an incompetent one. It is beyond the stupidities of Dan Brown’s idiotic prose, Jerry Jenkin’s rampant speechifying, and Steve Alten’s sub-dimensional characterization, although it is guilty of all three. No, those novelists, and others of their ilk, are the literary equivalent of c-movies—straight to video releases starring Michael Pare, C. Thomas Howell, or Cynthia Rothrock. They are bad, even insultingly so, but they still follow basic cinematic conventions; the camera’s always in focus, the actors hit their marks, and so forth. Hardly memorable, but competent in their low-rent ways.

No, Horeck is the written counterpart of the worst of the worst in cinema. Brian Horeck is Ed Wood.

Mr. Wood, for those unfamiliar with the canon, is unarguably the worst film director in the history of film, with Plan 9 From Outer Space his masterpiece. His actors bump into each other. Sets fall over. Ridiculous dialogue abounds. Characters leave scenes in one type of car, and arrive in another. Continuity is unheard of. And (and this is key) it is all performed with the solemnity and gravitas of a filmmaker who believes he is the next Orson Welles. Watching one of his films is to sit in the dark with mouth agape, astonished that someone captured this kind of ineptitude on film, and then released it on the public.

Granted, it is difficult to capture that kind of amateurish quality in a book. But take a look at this random sampling of Mr. Horeck’s prose, and please remember, all spelling mistakes, punctuation errors, and inane descriptions are verbatim Horeck, meticulously transcribed to ensure maximum effect. Ignore the plot (we’ll get to that), and simply luxuriate in Horeck’s writing style.

“Just then, a loud moaning sound echoed throughout the whole area. The three men looked at each other, remaining motionless and silent, trying to hear it one more time so to know what it was and where it was coming from.

“‘What in the hell was that?’ asked Bob.

“What they didn’t realize is that the sound they all heard was a warning. A warning from a creature of another world that even their worst nightmares could not prepare them for. They had stumbled into the wrong place at the wrong time. The creature was using the old abandoned beaver house in the middle of the pond as a shield. With its large body submerged, only its dark, crocodile eyes protruded from its head, just enough to break the water’s surface. While honing in on its prey, it travelled through the water like a torpedo headed straight for its target, creating a small wake on the calm pond.”

“Just then, the once mirror-calm water suddenly erupted with one of the NYANYA creatures being totally exposed to them. This sudden horrifying experience put them in a state of disoriented shock…They watched this huge, engrossing creature that their minds could never have imagined, heading their way.”

“Distracted, Carol talked to he son with her back to the monitor. The computer monitor showed a saucer appearing up on the plateau. The alien activity continued while she engaged in a lengthy conversation with her son.”

“What he’d seen here the day before spooked him, giving him a creepy feeling about the whole area. He was unaware that a second large creature was stalking him, and was swimming in his direction. Attracted by the sound of the bike’s motor running along the edge of the pond the creature was near Steve, just under the surface of the water. It would have been clearly visible to him, if only he would have checked out the area a little closer. It was a blessing that he kept moving, for a hellish confrontation would have resulted if he had stopped.”

“‘We know your good at pressing buttons Steve,’ chuckled Bob.”

“Later that evening at Brenda’s for dinner Steve held his plate out over the table with a few drinks under his belt.”

Are you getting the point?

Mr. Horeck has said in interviews that he counts Elmore Leonard as a major influence, and indeed, Leonard is a master at writing simply, yet achieving glorious results. Horeck is no Leonard. If there is a professional writer whom Horeck closely emulates, it is the late, great Evan Hunter.

Let me clarify that, lest there be some hackles raised. Horeck is not Evan Hunter’s heir apparent. Hunter was a premier pop stylist, and in the guise of his pseudonym Ed McBain, crafted some of the finest police procedurals in American literature. Horeck is not Evan Hunter, nor is he Ed McBain; he is, in truth, the fictional police officer Ollie Weeks of McBain’s 82nd Precinct novels. In one of Hunter’s last McBain works, Fat Ollie’s Book, the character of Weeks has decided to write a book, based slightly upon his own experiences, but based far more on what he believes a novel about policework should be about. The dilemma is that Weeks doesn’t read books, ever. Consequently, Fat Ollie’s novel (titled Report to the Commissioner, and measures a vast 36 pages long, if memory serves), is trite, banal, utterly ridiculous, and completely inept. Hunter spliced pages of the novel among the other stories that make up Fat Ollie’s Book, and it is a howler par excellence. Hunter plays with the grammar, the style, the punctuation, resulting in a manuscript so rotten it would make any copy editor faint dead away.

And even that is better than Minnow Trap, if only because of its considerably shorter length.

Horeck’s plot? A group of Northern Ontario cottagers realize that an alien invasion is taking place in their backyard, and they set out to stop it. So far, so good. Superior entertainments have been crafted from these very elements. H.G. Wells’ classic The War of the Worlds had exactly the same set-up, as an ordinary man runs from horrific, menacing alien invaders. More recently, filmmaker M. Night Shamalyan gave us Signs, about an alien invasion from the point of view of a family trapped in their house. Both had the same basic plot points, and both created deeply memorable works.

Yet beyond Horeck’s inability to grasp the basics of either grammar or storytelling, he also is incapable of creating a remotely plausible scenario. The mere notion that a gang of middle-aged cottagers would be purposely kept on the front lines of an alien invasion by their own government, under the absolutely ludicrous theory that they are familiar with the area and are thereby somehow more qualified to study and launch an attack on said invaders than, say, the military, does not even have a toehold on reality. Horeck never comes within spitting distance of making such a scenario believable.

And the dialogue! Here’s a hefty chunk of the prose, as the cottagers discuss what to do about the aliens (called NYANYAS). Again, all punctuation is Horeck’s doing.

“Mike, for God’s sake. We’re all a team here,” said Steve.

“So what in hell do us girls do then?” inquired Janis.

“Well, you girls can go to that general store in Webbwood and buy lots of butter and garlic, and wine. You’ve heard of a lobster fest? Well, we’re gonna have the world’s first NYANYA Fest,” said Steve.

“Yes. And the taste should be out of this world!” punned Bob.

“You mean they’re to die for!” jested Mike.

“Whoa. Lets hope that it’s not the way that sounds,” remarked Steve.

“I don’t believe what I’m hearing. You guys are about to take on real critical tasks and all you can do is joke about it,” said Mary.

“I don’t think Steve’s joking,” said Nick. “His gesture is a positive one. He’s planning our victory party. Just like sport teams do before they leave their dressing room,” remarked Nick.

Or take a gander at this howler, a tender moment between husband and wife before the final battle:

“No sweetheart. They won’t be handing us a Nobel Peace Prize for this event. And it won’t be recorded in history. But one thing is for sure, we’ll be able to look at ourselves in the mirror each morning. And thank the Lord for what we have done here to make this planet a safer place to live. And our biggest acknowledgement will be from Him.”

In my dreams, I giggle at the thought of this monstrosity being given the audiobook treatment. Just think: on Beneath the Covers (a program on Canada’s CBC radio), actor Graham Greene lends his robust baritone to such tripe, and is overcome with shame, muttering “What the hell?” under his breath again and again and again.

It’s not that Minnow Trap is bad: to misquote an episode of Friends, “It’s that it’s so bad, it makes me want to stick my finger into my eye, through my eyesocket, into my brain, and swirl it around.”

Minnow Trap is more than a terrible, horrible, any-disparaging-adjective-you-could-possibly-ascribe novel. It is the Rosetta Stone of bad novels. It should be taught in schools. It should be mandatory reading for all would-be authors.

Horeck does manage one moment of sheer terror. In the author notes, the final sentence reads, “This is his first novel and he plans to release others in the near future.”

Be afraid. Be very, very afraid.

Jesus Christ is this bad. I’ll have more later, but this is without a doubt the worst novel I have ever read.

Abysmal.
Nauseating.
Vile.

And that’s just the punctuation.

Title says it all. Incredibly entertaining. Now, I’m going through all the extras.

Harvey is Canada’s next great fabulist. With echoes of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Eric McCormack, Harvey concocts a wonderfully surreal world.

When done, read:

One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Mysterium – Eric McCormack

Good stuff, tons of free games. A great time-waster.

The reviews are awful. Most people admit to not having even read the book. What we get, instead of reviews, is political/religious zealotry masquarading as criticism.

A waste of time.

My publisher released this a few years ago. Tony Burgess seems a very talented man. I’m going to finish this, then start in on his Canadian zombie trilogy.

What are a writer’s responsibilities? In a famous aphorism by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Homes, they are “firstly, to be intelligible, secondly, to be interesting, and thirdly, to be clever.”

English author Julian Barnes has taken Doyle’s exacting criteria to heart. Twice nominated for the Booker Prize for his novels Flaubert’s Parrot and England, England, Barnes has delivered a passel of ferociously clever works, intensely literate stories that mingle satire with sometimes raucous humour.

Now, melding his sensibilities with those of Doyle, Barnes draws upon copious historical resources to reenact a fascinating episode in Sir Arthur’s life: the Edalji Case. Documenting one of the few times when the mystery writer employed his celebrity to an actual crime, Arthur & George delivers an engrossing true-life Victorian mystery story that, in a time of racial profiling and increased fear of the outsider, still has unfortunate relevance.

This is not the first time Doyle has graced the pages of other authors of fiction. William Hjortsberg had Doyle team up with Harry Houdini to track a serial killer in the fantasy Nevermore. Mark Frost twice used Doyle as an excuse to visit conspiracies of the occult in The List of 7 and The 6 Messiahs. While both authors presented entertaining forays into speculative fiction, neither can match Barnes for pure style enhanced with empathy and grace. And while the Edalji case may not be as fanciful or complex as the ornate gothic mysteries of Frost and Hjortsberg, it makes up in superb characterization and theme what it lacks in adventure.

George Edalji is an English solicitor, a man who fervently believes “that he is English, he is a student of the laws of England, and one day, God willing, he will marry according to the rites and ceremonies of the Church of England,” However, George’s father is Indian, a Parsee, and as such, George is constantly judged as being different.

In an occasion of monstrous discrimination, Edalji is convicted of horrific crimes on absurdly thin evidence, and sentenced to seven years in prison. Doyle, wielding the skills of his fictional detective, takes up George’s cause, eventually uncovering precisely how English police decided that “a respectable lawyer, bat-blind and of slight physique, [became] a degenerate who flits across fields at dead of night, evading the watch of twenty special constables, in order to wade through the blood of mutilated animals.”

While the mystery is a fascinating one, far more realistic than those of Holmes, Arthur & George truly functions as a meticulous literary duet between two men, outwardly dissimilar, yet each possessing qualities that make them, in Doyle’s words, “unofficial Englishmen.”

George is almost the stereotypical Englishman, armed with a placid demeanour and firm belief in the rule of law, yet his skin marks him as someone of differing values, and therefore must be feared. Arthur, by way of contrast, is thought of as the ultimate Englishman, yet his bombastic attitude, Scottish heritage, and unwavering belief in spiritualism set him far apart from his countrymen.

Barnes fills his pages with pointed subtext concerning governmental whitewash techniques and racial profiling, but they are subtle barbs, piercing the skin ever so slightly. Like his earlier novels, especially the rambunctiously funny The History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters, Barnes never lets a diatribe get in the way of a good story.

And Arthur & George is indeed a good, good story, intelligent, interesting, and complex. While the reticent George ultimately decides that “there are worse fates . . . than to be a footnote in legal history,” Barnes has no such reluctance. In Arthur & George, he has brought about a graceful re-imagining of a forgotten event, in a manner that would do Sir Arthur proud.