Seven Footprints to Satan

By Abraham Merritt

James Kirkham is a fearless explorer, who came back to New York from a very profitable trip in China. He gets kidnapped off the streets of downtown Manhattan by the minions of a crime lord and evil genius who calls himself Satan. Kirkham finds himself in Satan's lair with many other famous people trapped or blackmailed by Satan, and forced to play a game of seven footprints. Kirkham winds up a bond servant to Satan, and is compelled to commit various fantastic crimes while in his service.

• Language: English
• Publisher: e-artnow
• Release date: Jun 6, 2018
• ISBN: 9788026894704

Abraham Merritt

Abraham Grace Merritt (January 20, 1884 – August 21, 1943) – known by his byline, A. Merritt – was an American Sunday magazine editor and a writer of fantastic fiction. (Wikipedia)

Reviews for Seven Footprints to Satan

[ashleytylerjohn · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is a fairly silly book, but when making allowances for the time and place (it's an oldie!) it's not exactly a bad read. The characters are unconvincing cardboard cutouts, the hero is dashing, the girl (and she's definitely the girl and no more) is lovely, the villain's very bad, and it's all rather racist and sexist and the plot's laughable and nobody would ever behave like that.

What is does have going for it is it's breathless pulp fiction quality, a certain swaggering bravado, but really it's no more deep than any of those 10 minute serialized movies that used to air before the big picture. I would have eaten this up as a tween, but now, I recognize it for what it was, and will move on to more satisfying fare.

Incidentally, despite appearances, this is a action-suspense-thriller, not a supernatural fantasy of any kind. I don't think that's really a spoiler--you should be able to know your genre going in!

(Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s).