Richard Laymon is
my favorite Bad Writer. He ladles out tasty helping after tasty helping of
fast-paced horror, amusing & ridiculous banter, inexplicable character
motivation, bloody mayhem, sexual torture, horny juveniles, and eye-rolling
coincidence. His rich stews are chock-full of laugh-out-loud (or gasp-out-loud)
moments that are berserk, bizarre, and often hilarious. He is also insanely
repetitious, incredibly sleazy, and his mono-focus on BOOBS BOOBS BOOBS (and
the teenage boys who love them) is positively mono-maniacal. Why do i keep
returning to his novels? They must be like crack to me. He is a terrible writer
in so many ways, but a person cannot fault his expert ability with pacing or
the overripe fecundity of his imagination. He's one of a kind.
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ISLAND is
incredibly offensive, bizarrely interesting, and often a lot of frenetic,
fast-paced fun. Sleazy, escapist enjoyment; I felt guilty. A bunch of survivors
of a suspicious explosion on a private yacht run around a tropical island,
getting picked off or captured & abused by unknown assailants. Fortunately,
a relentlessly horny teenage boy is on hand to be our fearless hero, audience
identification point, and cataloger of all things he deems attractive or
unattractive in women.

The protagonist awkwardly getting in touch with his dark
side a couple times was a nifty touch, although it also meant having to get
through some repulsive, drooling depictions of abuse (par for the course for Laymon
readers, unfortunately). But "nifty" is definitely not the right word
for the very ending, one where our boy-hero decides to bring his exploration of
that dark side to the next level. “Genuinely disturbing" is probably a more
appropriate phrase.
Witness this finale – BIG, BIG SPOILER AHEAD IN THIS
PARAGRAPH – in which our horny young idiot of a protagonist finally gets some
of his sexual fantasies fulfilled: after many struggles, a lot of quick
thinking, and a bit of luck, he manages to heroically save the day by violently
dispatching both of the heinous, monstrous villains... and then simply decides
to keep his fellow survivors imprisoned ("uh oh, I can't find the key to your cages!")... and so is able
to take those villains' place, living in their island mansion, a bunch of naked
women he's been salivating over throughout the novel now full of gratitude
towards him... and now also available for his every whim - that is, if they
ever want to get out of those cages. Golly gee, I guess it really IS a happy
ending for our brave lad!
That ending is diabolically clever. To make matters even
more unnerving, the tone of the novel's first person narrative, one that is in
a journal format, is both angsty Young Adult and gee whiz, what a crazy adventure I'm having! That tone remains
consistent from the zippy opening to the upsetting final decision. The reader
is positively not let off the hook and I was left with that lingering,
sickening, dread-filled feeling in my stomach that so many horror authors
aspire but often fail to create. Maybe Laymon isn't such a bad writer after
all. Having a hero who gradually, increasingly exhibits villainous attributes
is nothing new - but it was genuinely startling to see it happen in Island. And
I suppose it can also be said that crudity can sometimes get more visceral
results than ambiguity and literariness.
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NIGHT IN LONESOME OCTOBER:
One late night, heartbroken college student Ed decides to soothe his troubled
soul by taking a long nighttime stroll to Dandi Donuts. And so begins an
addiction. With each subsequent evening walk he learns more about the eerie,
threatening, hypnotic underside of the sleepy small town of Wilmington. What
lurks in Wilmington? Well, let's see... a vindictive cycling senior, predators
in a van with alluring bait, a sad and scary shut-in clown, cannibalistic
homeless people lurking under bridges, a sociopath with the looks of a male
model who fixates on Ed and his new lady, and an enticing young miss who makes
a practice of sneaking into homes to make herself at home.

The novel delivers genuine chills in set-piece after
set-piece, from the creepy exploration of various silent homes to the image of
a silent lumbering figure climbing over a fence on the edge of a ballpark at
midnight to an increasingly threatening conversation with a lunatic to an
ill-judged decision to have a little moonlit sex under a bridge. This was a
genuinely tense novel.
It is also, per standard Laymon, a microscopic narrative. Although
it takes place over the course of several days, we are often in Ed's head on a
minute-by-minute basis. At times this can get a bit tedious but it mainly works. It is all so you are
there now.
I was also pleased at how Laymon handles his gay character.
At first the hero's frenemy Kirkus was straight-up stereotype and I was
annoyed. He's swishy and he speaks in some kind of affected Noel Coward voice
and he is constantly predatory towards our hero's apparently hot little bod. But
then we get Kirkus' horrifying back-story and I was rather blown away by just how
tough Laymon decided to be when depicting how bad it can get for young queers.
Kudos! No punches pulled, and even better, the punches thrown land in
surprisingly ambiguous and troubling places. And after this revelation...
Kirkus is still the same pretentious, pathetic, and rather creepy guy, one who
acts in an even more predatory style. It doesn't matter - Kirkus became real,
to me and to Ed, and his move from asshole to assholish friend felt
well-earned. Oh and spoiler: he also saves the day, so there's that.
If you are a Laymon fan and if any of the above makes you
think that this atypical Laymon offering lacks the typical Laymon excesses of
torture, rape, sadism, and excessive blood-is-everywhere type violence... well, I guess don't worry. The climax has all of that, sicko.
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It is often impossible to defend the author or his books. I
usually feel like showering after reading one of his novels. An unclean sort of
fun. But still, well, fun. Lots of fun!