Laymon's first hard-cover since his first book (The Cellar, 1980,
not reviewed) - and a fine return it is as this high-spirited,
prolific horror writer weighs in with a typically brisk and
black-humored yarn about what a fellow horror author and his pals
do when they find the stake of the title - embedded in a mummified
corpse. Is the corpse a vampire? The Colorado ghost town where
horror novelist Larry Durban, his neighbor Pete, and their wives
find the body is eerie enough, but none of the four believes in
vampires - although whoever killed the woman must have thought her
a monster, and wouldn't all this make a nifty nonfiction book? So
Larry writes several chapters about finding the corpse and about
how he and Pete later returned to the hotel and stole the body, now
hidden in Larry's garage awaiting his book-in-progress's climax,
the pulling of the stake. Larry postpones that climax, though,
because as he digs out the identity of the body - local high-school
cheerleader Bonnie Saxon, a dead-ringer for his own daughter Lane
but murdered 20 years back, along with several other girls, by one
Uriah Radley - he becomes erotically obsessed with Bonnie, waking
up next to her corpse. Meanwhile, in a major, thematically obvious
subplot - monsters do exist - a real-life fiend invades Larry's
family: Lane's English teacher, handsome Mr. Kramer, who molests
and murders one of Lane's classmates, then sets his sights on
flirtatious Lane, eventually raping her. And at the same time,
Uriah Radley, escaped from an asylum and gripping a stake, tracks
after Larry & Co., whom he believes to be vampires. All parties
converge in a violent and twisty climax that spirals into a truly
surprising, and surprisingly happy, ending. Spooky, sexy, and lots
of nasty fun. (Kirkus Reviews)
'If you've missed Laymon, you've missed a treat' Stephen King In an
abandoned hotel in a Californian ghost town, horror writer Larry
Dunbar and his friends make a chilling discovery. By chance they
stumble on a coffin hidden under the stairs. Within lies the corpse
of a naked female - with a stake through its heart. Was she the
innocent victim of a gruesome murder? Or was she a vampire? There's
only one way for Larry to solve the mystery - he must pull out the
stake...
General
Imprint: |
Headline Feature
|
Country of origin: |
United Kingdom |
Release date: |
June 1991 |
Authors: |
Richard Laymon
|
Dimensions: |
178 x 112 x 33mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Paperback - Mass Market
|
Pages: |
512 |
Edition: |
New Ed |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-7472-3548-4 |
Categories: |
Books >
Fiction >
Genre fiction >
Horror & ghost stories
|
LSN: |
0-7472-3548-1 |
Barcode: |
9780747235484 |
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!