Richard Laymon Kills!
 

Any other fans of the late great Richard Laymon?

I am just re reading Darkness Tell Us after deciding to revisit my favourite genre writer. I grew up with these seriously screwed up books and have probably somewhere in the region of 20 - 25 of his novels.

I think he was far better than Stephen King and I particularly loved his no nonsense approach to storytelling.

I always avoided him as I thought his stuff was just more identikit badly written American horror á la Stephen King or Dean Koontz, but my mother passed me a copy of The Glory Bus and I was delighted to discover that he was in a different league of writing quality, character generation and storytelling -more like Jack Ketchum in intensity and skill.

I still have not read any more of his stuff, but will do after the pleasant surprise of The Glory Bus.

I like Laymon's writing. Decent storytelling, not too wordy and the power to repulse with his depictions of horror, terror.

Don't know why his stories haven't been made into films. Possibly as the violence would have to be minimised.

I've long been a fan of Laymon's work. The best of his that I've read have been The Island, Funland, Beware!, Endless Night and Quake. In fact, I'd have to say that I've enjoyed everything he's written. I've still got a few here to get through yet.

It's also interesting to note that Laymon was big friends with Dean Koontz and Koontz has posthumously finished up a couple of Laymon's unpublished and unfinished works. This explains why a few novels appeared after Laymon's untimely death.

and that is also the reason why there not as good :eek:

I knew he has had some novels released since he died, however i didn't realise Koontz was the author working on them.

When he does straight horror he's a fine writer.

I also find Shaun Hutson a decent read for gory fun.

I don't think I'd put Laymon above King's early work, Cujo, Carrie etc. But on level ground in later works, but alas neither comes close to Ramsey Campbell, a bit trippy at first, but after a couple of his books you're hooked on his Uk based horror tales.

[namedrop] Lovely, lovely bloke too. [/namedrop]

Hutson tells a good, gory story and seems to have picked up where Guy N. Smith left off. I'm a huge fan of GNS, so my taste in books is just as bad as my taste in films. Gotta love those trashy pulp horror novels of the 70's and early 80's. :lol:

How are your crabs?