Review by Mark Sieber

Island

Written by Richard Laymon
Leisure Books
504 pgs
$6.99 U.S.
$8 CAN

Young Rupert Conway accepts an invitation from his rather wealthy girlfriend to go on a cruise on the South Seas. It starts out ideally, his girl's three sisters are all very attractive and her mother is not so bad either. He's having a blast on the trip, checking out the bathing suit clad women and avoiding the unpleasant males. During a rest stop on a tiny island, an accident occurs and the yacht they have explodes. Or was it an accident? Now the vacationers are stranded and apparently alone. One by one, the survivors are being brutally murdered. Is it one of the family or someone else on the island?

This is the setup for this lengthy novel from genre legend, Richard Laymon. The novel is written in journal form, with first person prose by chatty young Rupert. The events in Island, in typical Laymon form, are wildly entertaining. The book is overfilled with delirious amounts of bloody violence and lots of sex. The 504 pages of Island never drag and the pages almost seem to turn themselves. By the end of this harried story, the reader has been assaulted by a barrage of rape, torture, and gore strong enough to please the staunchest horror film fanatic.

Richard Laymon burst onto the horror literature scene with his gruesome novel, The Cellar, in 1980. There hadn't been a book quite this brutal or explicit published until then. Laymon's prose was as down to Earth and readable as Stephen King's, but he took matters in his books a hell of a lot further than King ever did. Since that jaw-dropping debut, Richard Laymon wrote book after book of beautifully written stories that were all compulsively readable. One never seems to be able to guess what will happen next in a Laymon novel. Island is one of the best of the many novels he penned.

Sadly, Richard Laymon, until just recently, had a difficult time getting his fiction published in America. He owed his livelihood to the British, who made his books bestsellers. Other than the horror small press, Laymon couldn't get a contract in his home country.

The good folks at Leisure Books are changing all that. They are in the process of publishing a series of inexpensive paperback Richard Laymon books. Thus far, they have given us Bite, One Rainy Night, Among The Missing, The Traveling Vampire Show, In The Dark and now Island. All of these books are currently in print. They can be easily ordered or found in secondhand bookstores. And you'll find horrors and depravity sadly lacking in most horror films. Laymon always seemed to be taking a childlike glee in setting the reader up for a horrifyingly perverse or disgusting surprise in his fiction. In the final chapter in Island, for instance, Laymon pulls out a trump card with a revelation that no one will see coming. It had me howling in surprise and horrid humor.

On Valentine's Day, 2001, I got a sucker punch at the Book Forum in Gorezone. A fellow writer did a post saying that Dick Laymon had died just that afternoon in his study. At age 54, Richard Laymon was dead. I wanted it to be a lie, a tasteless stunt originated by some Internet troublemaker. We've all known of lots of those. Horribly, it was true.

I never had the pleasure of meeting Richard Laymon, but from each and every account I've ever heard about fans meeting the man, a pleasure is what meeting him truly was. His energetic enthusiasm has become legendary, as was his selfless generosity towards up and coming writers. By all accounts, he was a prince of a man, the exact opposite of the gruesome image one might gather from reading his brutal fiction. I'll always regret that I never had the opportunity to shake Richard Laymon's hand and tell him how much his writing meant to me. There will never be another like him. However, he left us his legacy...a large body of extraordinary fiction that will delight and mortify anyone with balls enough to pick up one of his books.

If this review has titillated your interest in the least, please visit Richard Laymon Kills!, the official Website devoted to the man and his fiction. It's as comprehensive as anything on the Web and special offers on his books can be found there.

http://www.ains.net.au/~gerlach/rlaymon.htm

Before I sign off, I'd like to say a few words about Leisure Books. These guys are putting out two wonderful horror paperbacks each month and I'm so thankful that they are. Back in the 1980's, when millions of readers were discovering horror through Stephen King, there were scads of garishly covered horror novels on bookstore shelves. A lot of it was good, a lot was not. It was a renaissance time for horror, but all good times had to come to ends. During the '90's, unless you were King, Koontz, Anne Rice, Clive Barker and precious few others, you had poor chance of getting a decent publication and distribution deal in America. The horror small press thrived, but many readers just couldn't pay 30, 40, 50 or even more dollars for a book, no matter how well made it was. Leisure is making it fun again. As I said before, they issue two horror novels per month, and they are publishing the lesser known (but not lesser talented) writers and each month offers new thrills and surprises. They have Book Club, where you can get both books delivered to your door every month at a discount. Plus, you only pay shipping and handling on your first package. This is a great deal and I'm a charter member.

http://www.dorchesterpub.com/horror_01.htm

Please ask any questions, give praise, throw insults or point out inaccuracies to me here: noclublonewolf@cox.net