Richard Laymon (Horror Author) General Discussion

Richard Laymon wrote over thirty novels and seventy short stories. In May 2001 The Travelling Vampire Show won the Bram Stoker Award for Best Horror Novel, a prize for which Laymon had previously been shortlisted with Flesh, Funland, A Good, Secret Place (Best Anthology) and A Writer's Tale (Best Non-fiction).

A native of Chicago, Laymon attended Willamette University in Salem, Oregon, and took an MA in English Literature from Loyola University, Los Angeles. In 2000, he was elected President of the Horror Writers Association.

He died in February 2001.

This guy's probably my all-time favorite author. I'll be the first to admit he's not the most fancy writer in the world, but he gets straight to the point and he can make you feel tense with as few words as possible... that's quite some achievement.

Stephen King bad-mouthed him in Danse Macabre, actually, before praising him in the later-part of the 80's and through the 90's. He was also close friends with Dean Koontz.

The post above said he died on February 2001, it was in fact Valentine's Day

• The Cellar (1980)
  
• The Woods Are Dark (1981)
  
• Night Show (1984)
  
• Beware! (1985)
  
• The Beast House (1986)
  
• Allhallow's Eve (1986)
  
• Flesh (1987)
  
• Resurrection Dreams (1988)
  
• Funland (1989)
  
• The Stake (1990)
  
• Darkness, Tell Us (1991)
  
• Island (1991)
  
• Alarums (1992)
  
• Blood Games (1992)
  
• Endless Night (1993)
  
• Savage (1993)
  
• Quake (1995)
  
• Body Rides (1996)
  
• Bite (1996)
  
• After Midnight (1997)
  
• The Midnight Tour (1998)
  
• Among the Missing (1999)
  
• Come Out Tonight (1999)
  
• Traveling Vampire Show (2000)
  
• One Rainy Night (2000)
  
• In the Dark (2001)
  
• No Sanctuary (2001)
  
• Night in the Lonesome October (2001)
  
• Friday Night in the Beast House (2001)
  
• Amara (2003)
  
• The Lake (2004)
  
• The Glory Bus (2005)
  

A couple of dates in this list are wrong, I'm positive In The Dark was released in the 90's, because I remember I was dating the person who bought the book for me back in 97 or 98.

My favorite books are highlighted. I'll put up some synopsis' later on.

What did he die of? Was he really old?

Lemme see.... he was almost 58. Died of a heart-attack. He was always on the chunky side, though.




These are two of my favorites (Island in particular has one of the best endings to any book, ever):


When eight people go on a cruise to the Bahamas, they plan to swim, sunbathe and relax. But after their yacht blows up, they find themselves stranded on a desert island. As they wait to be rescued, it becomes clear they're not alone on the island. In the jungle behind the beach there's a maniac on the loose with murder in his heart. And he's plotting to kill them all, one by one...


Twenty minutes before the quake hits, Stanley is ogling a pretty female jogger through his living-room window. He watches Sheila every morning and that's not all he'd like to do to her. As the quake hits, Sheila becomes separated from her husband and daughter. Will her family get there before Stanley does?

In The Dark



Donnerville librarian, Jane Kerry, receives an envelope containing a 50-dollar bill and a note instructing her to "look homeward, angel" and signed "MOG (Master of Games)". So begins The Game - pushing Jane into crazy, immoral, criminal actions. When she tries to quit, MOG has other ideas.

Ever since the LA riots Neal has carried a pistol in his car - and tonight he needs it. He shoots a man assaulting a woman tied naked to a tree by the freeway. As a reward, Elise gives Neal a magic bracelet that enables him to step inside other people, to see through their eyes and experience their feelings. To take 'body rides'. Neal returns to check on the man he shot. But the man is not dead - he's alive and breathing vengeance. First he's going to finish the job on Elise, then he's going to butcher Neal. But this time, with the help of the bracelet, Neal can look inside his would-be killer's skull...

The Woods Are Dark

In the woods are six dead trees. The killing trees. That's where they take them. People like Neala and her friend Sherri, and the Dills family. Innocent travellers on vacation, seized and bound, stripped of their valuables and shackled to the trees to wait. In the woods. In the dark.

A thriller tellling the story of The Beast House, the legendary site of ghastly murders. The midnight tour is the one beginning on the stroke of midnight, Saturday nights only. On this particular Saturday night the tourists are to be joined by an unexpected visitor and they will be lucky to get out alive.

Cop's daughter, Jody, is sleeping over at a friend's when the killers break in. They slaughter the family but Jody escapes, killing a man on the way out. All rapist and murderer Simon Quist has to do now is dispose of the one eyewitness to the massacre. And he can't wait to get his hands on Jody.

Gabo, let me ask you this:

Stephen King, though a horror writer and shock jock, normally has the good guy win out over evil. Very rare that evil wins in the end. Sure the good guy is quasi good, as that he is a drug addict or has some other hang up, and he might end up dead, but they prevail over the demon or wraith or vampire towards books end.

There are exceptions, for his true horror novels like Pet Sematary, etc. but as a general rule, it's true.

Now this Richard Laymon guy, does he have some bad stuff happen, and then it's a terrible horror ending? Or does good prevail?

Cause if I read a book where it's all blood and guts and then at the end the protagonist is a serial killer all along, like that one book by Peter Straub I read, I don't get into that kind of thing.

If he mixes it up, tell me one of his books where evil does not win, and I will give it a go, see how I like it.

He kind of mixes it up... usually he'll have a good guy and a REALLY good guy, and the really good guy will be fine at the end no matter what... but the plain ol' good guy? He may end up dying or going nuts or something, but usually his own damn fault (and not the authors... I swear). Either way, good tends to prevails.

If you find the book Island, I recommend that. It's got a twist ending, but it's not a blood and guts kind of twist. Though his books are violent... for example, I think in Island the protagonist stabs the villain in the nuts.

A testicle stabbin?!?!? Well, if the guy had it coming, then it's cool.

Good deal, you should look out for it then.

'cept, you know, he's from the US, but he's only popular in the UK and Australia. I heard they've started releasing his books over there since he died, but I don't know how easy they are to come across.

I will check the used book store.

A guy getting stabbed, in the nuts! Now, there is a book worth reading.

Looking over this thread again because Nyphodora has been reading some of this dude's books.

I remember Endless Night is a good book. It was a book that was a reasonable length, but the action got started right off the first few pages. It's like "I'm sleeping over a friend's place tonight... oh snap, she got gutted by a spear!"

OH man, Dave reading Richard Laymon. Seriously not a HUGE gore and blood and guts kinda guy, but he does write about subject matter that would make some people uncomfortable.

As for the nut stabbin..well it wasn't nut stabbin, it was way better than that haha.

Yeah I like the dude so far, real excited about it, it's hard for me to find authors I really enjoy.

I haven't met anyone who gave him a try and didn't love him. A lot of people bag him because his style is not so sophistocated (the book Savage was good in that respect, though), but he gives you what you want. Also gives you stuff you don't think you want, but secretly do.

I like his style, it's an easy read cause you don't have to think about it so much you know.

Your right he does give you what you want, wether you admit it or not haha. Well not all of it is a want but yeah he does that.

He also writes about what guys think about better than anyone else.

You know really it's not just that he writes what guys think better than anyone else, which I'm sure is true, it's that he writes what people think. It's like what people really think in weird messed up situations

Yeah, that's kind of true. Like the mind isn't really as focused on situations and problems like they are in a lot of other books; it has a tendancy to wander and linger on weird shit that has nothing to do with anything. If that makes sense.

I have noticed that he references other books he has written in his books.
Like in In the Dark, when Jane goe sin the house beside the graveyard she thinks about a book she had read about a horrible House wih wax sculptures of murder victims in it. I'm sure he was referencing Beast House.

Whidden wrote:

I will check the used book store.

I forgot to do this. I just went a couple of months ago dammit.