Richard LaymonBesprekingen

Dit was mijn eerste Richard Laymon. Sindsdien bijna alles van hem gelezen. Dit was na alle sfeervolle subtiele griezelvertellingen iets heel nieuw. Bloedspannend zonder opsmuk met geweldige directe dialogen. Niet diepgravend, maar vooral heeeel eng.

When Alice's friend Serena goes away she stays in her house, with its sunken bathtub and big-screen TV. Best of all is the outdoor swimming pool. But one night a stranger walks out of the woods and jumps naked into the pool. Alice hopes he won't be coming to get her, like so many have done before.

Melanie Conway is a pale and lovely violinist who has strange visions of death. Penelope Conway is even more stunning than her sister but her looks frequently get her into trouble. Captivated by these two sisters, Melanie's boyfriend Bodie finds himself drawn into a strange mystery

Nothing unusual ever happens in Ashburg, until a local family are mutilated and left to die in their own home. Since then, the house has stood empty, but when mysterious invitations arrive announcing a party there, nobody thinks its a joke. After all, it is Allhallow's Eve.

AMARA, Princess of Egypt, the once-beautiful wife of Mentuhotep the First, lies in her coffin in the Charles Ward museum. Dead these 4000 years, now she's just an inanimate bundle of withered skin and desiccated bone. Or is she? When Barney the nightwatchman, discovers that the mummy's coffin has been broken open, it seems grave-robbers are at work, out to steal valuable artefacts, just as their kind have done for centuries. It's a pity Barney and the guards can't tell the authorities how the mummy came to be missing. But the dead can't testify to anything. Now Amara is free again, driven by an ancient need that can only be assuaged at the cost of human life. No one can oppose her, no bullet can stop her and nothing can kill her - for she is dead already

A Californian wife has left her academic husband. As she drives through the mountains in the early hours of the morning, she picks up a hitch-hiker - rugged, adventurous - who suggests a romantic stop. But no love takes place at The Bend that night and in the morning a body is found.

Author Gorman Hardy is hot on the trail of another bestseller and if half what's said about Malcasa Point is true, he's bound to make a killing. Petite and pretty Tyler and sexy Nora visit Malcasa full of expectation. But Malcasa Point is a place of pain, bestiality and death in The Beast House.

The supermarket shouldn't have been shut. It wasn't normal for Elsie to quit early, or for the guard dog to end up like hamburger meat, or for Elsie herself to feature on the butcher's slab, neatly wrapped and jointed. Residents of Oasis, like hotshot reporter Lacey Allen had better beware!

It's almost midnight. Cat's on the bed, facedown and naked. She's Sam's former girlfriend, the only woman he's ever loved. Sam's in the closet, with a hammer in one hand and a wooden stake in the other. Together they wait as the clock ticks down because the vampire is coming. "If you've missed Laymon, you've missed a treat."--Stephen King.

College friends Helen, Cora, Vivian, Finley and Abilene all meet up for one week every year. Helen has a taste for horror, and this year she has chosen the Totem Pole Lodge, a deserted hotel in the backwoods with a sinister past. But the girls soon find it is not as deserted as they thought.

When Neal rescues a woman from a vicious assult, she gives him a magic bracelet, which allows him to step inside other people to experience their feelings. But the woman's attacker is out for revenge, first on her, then Neal, and Neal must use the gift to look inside the would-be killer's head.

Visitors flock to see the Beast House with its blood-soaked corridors and creaky doors. Armed with video camcorders, these poor sould enter the forbidden house, never to return. The deeper they go into the house, the darker their nightmares become. Don't even think about going into the cellar

It's a hot, hot night. Too hot to be making love unless your romance is young, like Sherry and Duane's. It's their first time and the anticipation is killing. Duane goes to get condoms, Sherry waits, and waits, and hears a gunshot, and waits... A novel full of sex and violence and mystery.

Early UK Laymon hardcover published under the 'Richard Kelly' pseudonym. This is the story set in 'good old boy country', where the family braincell is handed down from uncle to goat, and where the sheep are shagged by morons wearing overalls fastened with a solitary button sewn into the skin.

At an end-of-term college party, six students come across a Ouija board. When a spirit called Butler tells them of a fortune hidden in the mountains, they head off on a two-day hike into the wilderness, where any danger may lie in wait to cut and slice and tear them limb from limb.

This title contains a cornucopia of short fiction based on homicidal maniacs, vampires and lust-crazed teenagers as well as drinkers in a low-life dive who attempt to salvage a diamond ring from the mouth of a severed head in a fish tank, with surprisingly grisly results.

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.

Out on a date at the movies, Marty is horrified to see Willy, the man who broke into her house and raped her ten years before. Now he is out of jail, Willy is out to get Marty. Fiends is the lead-off novella in this collection of horror stories.

No one in town has ever seen anything like it; a slimy, mobile tube of glistening yellow flesh with dull, staring eyes and an obscene, probing mouth. But the real horror is not what it looks like, or what it does when it invades your flesh - but what it makes you do to others

The resort of Boleta Bay is not the carefree place it used to be. A series of unexplained disappearances, and holiday-makers threatened by an army of leering bums, casts a shadow over summer pleasures. But now Boleda Bay is fighting back and their campaign leads them to the abandoned Funhouse.

One moment Pamela is a newly-wed with a loving husband and a comfortable home. The next, she's the prisoner of a killer who has lusted after her since high school - and now intends to make her his slave. Norman wouldn't say boo to a goose, so he's never going to throw bad-boy Duke out of his car or say no to Boots, the hyper-sexed hitch-hiker who tags along for the ride. Together the lawless pair take him on a wild journey that looks like it's heading straight for the electric chair. But when the glory bus comes along there's hope of salvation for all. Pamela and Norman are just two who climb on board. They don't know their destination is the furnace heat of the Mojave Desert, where a special welcome awaits the weary traveller. It can't be worse than what's gone before. Or can it?

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.

When eight people go on a cruise in the Bahamas, they plan to swim, sunbathe and relax. Getting shipwrecked is definitely not in the script. But after the yacht blows up they're stranded on a deserted island, and there's a maniac on the loose.

When Laymon (Island, etc.) died in 2001, he left behind numerous unpublished novels that Leisure has been issuing. This one is good but not great, combining the savagery of his earlier work (Beast House, etc.) with the spooky wonder of his later books (The Traveling Vampire Show, etc.). As the story begins, we see Candyman, a serial killer, at work, then observe teen Deana West watch in horror as her boyfriend is mowed down by a car driven by Candyman? The narrative then flashes back 20 years to a summer Deana's mother, Leigh, spent in rural Wisconsin; this, the strongest section, details eerie, erotic nighttime forays by Leigh and her lover, a weird local boy, that result in the boy's accidental death. Back in the present, Leigh gets involved with a cop who's a wolf in sheep's clothing, and she and Deana, who's taken to nighttime jogging and who herself gets involved with a mysterious neighbor and his odd, psychic sister, are menaced by the driver of the car that killed Deana's boyfriend. The plot is too complicated, although Laymon does tie all the strands up in a messy knot; but what counts here, as usual for Laymon, is the white-hot pacing, the rivers of blood (which will dismay mainstream readers) and, above all, the memorable evocation of the fathomless mystery of the moonlit hours. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

The midnight tour of the Beast House begins on the stroke of midnight on Saturday nights only. On this particular midnight tour, 13 unlucky tourists are joined by an unexpected visitor and they'll be lucky to get out alive.