Endless Night? Yep, it sure felt like it! (Endless Night - Richard Laymon)

Name: david_1967

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Product:	Endless Night - Richard Laymon
Date:	12/03/08 (45 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The first person narrative is quite funny

Disadvantages: Most of the rest of it

A couple of days ago I was scanning my bookshelves for something to read. I couldn't make my mind up whether to go for a crime novel, or sci-fi or even something a bit technical. In the end I opted for a book by Richard Laymon. A few years ago now I had read one of his called 'Island' about a group of eight people who become shipwrecked on an, you've guessed it, island with a deranged maniac on the loose which I had really enjoyed.

Remembering this I looked forward to tucking into this older title of his, published in 1993, entitled 'Endless Night'. It is a story about Jody Fargo, sixteen years old and spending the night at her friend Evelyn's house, when a group of killers break in. She witnesses her friend being kebabed by a spear and escapes the house but not before rescuing the only other survivor from the building; twelve year old Andy Clark. What follows is the desperate attempts of first the gang and then just a single member as they try to murder the two children for witnessing their atrocities. Simon Quirt (for he is the lone member) is left to mop up the mess and 'see to' the kids or it is his family who will pay the ultimate price. But he is looking forward to running into the girl again because he has plans for young Jody.....

What follows is some of the poorest writing I have read in a long time; at least since I read Ben Elton last. Neither of the main two characters come across as real people as they flit between emotions depending on the situation. I mean, I know young boys usually only have one thing on their minds (and most men too) but surely having seen your family disembowelled and only just escaped death yourself the last thing on your mind would be what a sixteen year olds chest feels like. Or maybe I'm just being naive. Jody herself even goes through a stage in the novel when she could almost be falling in love with a 12 year old! Even the language they use is all wrong. Whoever has heard teenage kids saying things like 'Cripes' outside of a George Lucas directed Star Wars episode.

The killers in the book, The Krulls, are an even thinner creation. Their transition from teens to sordid murderers is almost laughable as is the way they wear the skins of earlier kills in place of clothes while out 'having fun'. Even dabbing the foul smelling waste from a rotten corpse as aftershave is just ridiculous.

To add to my list of dislikes is the fact that sometimes the timescales in the book just didn't seem right. One minute a woman is just getting out of the shower and in the next minute she is dressed and made-up for the day. No woman I have ever met can get ready at that speed even if they had already decided on what they were going to wear! And the book is called 'Endless Night' where, should the story span a single night would be fine, but as it spans four or five then this just makes the title obsolete.

The author also spends a lot of time sticking a thumbs up to the NRA (National Rifle Association) as he has folks wearing their gear, talking of gun ownership and even taking the young kids out shooting Pepsi cans in the desert whilst the grown-ups(?) stand there brandishing shotguns and machine guns.

The one thing I did like about the tale was that it was written from two perspectives. The story from Jody's and Andy's point of view is written in the third person whilst Simon Quirt's is written in the first person giving you insights into the mans sick and twisted mind. I liked these chapters from Simon's point of view as he laughed and joked about his exploits, obtained great pleasure from disposing and mutilating bodies and enjoyed dressing up as a woman complete with dead woman's scalp for hair but those from the kids were really poor.

Stephen King says that 'if you've missed Laymon, you've missed a treat'. Well I'm sorry Mr. King but there must be a different Richard Laymon out there because this just wasn't any good. Maybe I am doing the bloke an injustice, after all I really enjoyed 'Island' but, as I read that many years ago, perhaps my reading tastes have just grown up.

Also posted on Ciao.

Summary: A ridiculous premise with implausible characters