HUNTED PAST REASON

Elder suspense master Matheson's masterpiece, far stronger than his famed chillers (Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, 2002, etc.).

The author combines classic man-against-nature and man-against-maniac tales, then fastens them to the armature of his main character’s spiritual belief system, building fearlessly long God-centered dialogues between hero and madman as if Dostoevsky were wandering around in Stephen King’s The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. Naming other literary echoes, let’s add that the classic rock-face climb from Deliverance gets reprised, as well as Daniel’s ordeal in the biblical lion’s den and Richard Connell’s oft-filmed short story, “The Most Dangerous Game.” Bob Hansen, 44-year-old novelist and sometime screenwriter, wants to write a book about backpacking in the northern California wilderness. Bob and wife Marian have dined thrice with Doug Crowley, 42, an out-of-work action-film actor (he last did a Ford SUV commercial), and his wife Nicole. But then Nicole divorces Doug for catting around, or perhaps because together neither can deal with their druggie son’s gun-in-mouth suicide. Survivalist nut Doug offers to take Bob on a heavy three-day hike to his cabin, where Marian will wait for them. Intimidated by his host, a perfectionist about gear and modes of wilderness survival, Bob sees himself as a flop hiker by campfire on Day One. Doug’s remarks cut ever deeper as we discern that this “malignant narcissist” is pathologically jealous of Bob’s success as writer, husband, and father. Later, Doug reveals his abused childhood and a failed liquor-store robbery that sent him for two years to a reformatory, where he was raped. He does the same to Bob and tells the writer to take off with a three-hour lead; Doug wants to hunt and kill him, then rape (or marry and sodomize) Marian. Solo Bob then faces the endless, outlandish hardships God drops on him as he races to save his wife.

Consistently inverts familiar situations and makes them spiritual learning moments; even the fan-satisfying shocker climax is enriched with irony. First-rate suspense.