NON-TORONTO/NON-CANADIAN REVIEW (BOO! HISS!)
The written word will always fail to viscerally scare. Your imagination runs at its own speed and the classic stand-by of the cat JUMPING OUT from behind the garbage can will never have the same sound blasting film effect on the page. Authors have to a throw a prickly blanket over the shivering reader’s body made up of an uneasy sense of dread over to make any kind of impact. The best tales are the ones that keep you up at night, staring at the dancing shadows on the wall, mentally re-enacting the horrifying events you’ve read on the page. Not many writers can do it. Most rely on the cheap grue and gore routine to get the “HORROR” label stamped on the front cover. At first glance that’s how I would categorize Richard Laymon. He’s written over 40 novels filled with all manners of rape, dismemberment and oogly creatures of the night. It’s not a good sign only recently (After his death) he’s started being published in North America after being in circulation for years in Great Britain, New Zealand and Australia. Does this man deserve all the slavish praise from writer luminaries like Stephen King and Jack Ketchum that’s printed on the inside cover? Or is he just another dime store hack that’s better kept in the dusty bargain bin bookstores?
Laymon's hero Ed Logan is brimming with anticipation for his second year at Willmington University. He's been missing Holly, whom he fell in love with the previous year. But when Ed returns to campus, Holly doesn't. He receives a letter that destroys his hopes; she has fallen in love with another man and won't be coming back. Virtually destroyed by the news, Ed struggles to study and even to sleep. Leaving his apartment one night for a walk, he finds that he has moved into what might almost be a different world. There are others out on the streets; are they human, these figures who hide in the shadows? Certainly, the prey they seek is marked for a grisly end. Needless to say, Ed becomes involved with these sinister figures, particularly a mystery girl who will change his life.
Night of Lonesome October is strictly an episodic affair. Ed Logan wanders the night looking for his mystery, sees something odd, and runs away yelping. Repeat. He meet all manner of oddballs, from Cannibals to chuckling old clown things but none of it really impact the story in any kind of way. It’s just there. And weird. It’s actually a little jarring to have the novel END by bringing in one of the many macabre sights we witnessed in the novel. It’s not satisfactory and doesn’t give insight on anything that came before. It feels like Laymon was too busy dreaming up his next novel filled with cyborg-cannibal-rape-jugglers that prey on innocent young school girls then to actual tie any of the threads of his gallery of horrors together.
The font is small, the sentences on the nose, and Laymon loves to describe every single detail: From the CRUNH a potato chip makes to the heat of coffee before someone drinks it. It’s a little annoying at first but once the groove gets going it isn’t that bad a pet peeve. His first person technique of having the Ed argue his actions is also an impressive literary technique. Otherwise, the stalker-ish habits exhibited throughout the novel would rub us even worse than they do now. The side character scream, jump into bed for graphically detailed sexual exploits and confidently fall into over the top hostage situations whenever the plot asks them too. One character may be an evil repressed deviant one page then come to the rescue the next. That’s just lazy writing.
Laymon can craft a creepy scene and put a sympathetic character in the middle of it, but that’s about it. I’d read another novel by Laymon out of sheer macabre interest for a breezy gory read, but I wouldn’t active seek his stuff out.
BUY IT: The books available at most fine and expensive box store book places. Pick it up for the cheapest at Chapters.ca
HEEEEEEEEEEEREEEEEE
By Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik
From Answers.com