After Midnight - Richard Laymon

...not, no.

After Midnight centres on a character called Alice who, after her friend Serena goes away on holiday with her boyfriend, has a nice big house all to herself. It quickly becomes apparent how paranoid Alice is being in a large house on her own (although nobody is forcing her), as much of the side of the house is made of glass, so people can see in (or out, if you look at it that way). Things are about to go pear-shaped for Alice ...
...wonders towards the house just after the phone-rings, and he thinks Alice is calling the police, so flees. She has actually been called by Tony, a seemingly insignificant wrong number (they never are, of course), and she tells him of the man in her pool and how scared she was and hangs up.

Much of the early chapters in the book are well-written and undeniably tense page-turners - Alice creeps round the house in the dark whilst sensing ... more

One day while scanning the shelves of my local library I happened to discover this horror based novel, which boasted that Stephen King had said 'If you've missed Laymon, you've missed a real treat' on the front cover. Well, I took the great mans advice and took it out for a couple of weeks. Was King serious? Probably not, no.

After Midnight centres on a character called Alice who, after her friend Serena goes away on holiday with her boyfriend, has a nice big house all to herself. It quickly becomes apparent how paranoid Alice is being in a large house on her own (although nobody is forcing her), as much of the side of the house is made of glass, so people can see in (or out, if you look at it that way). Things are about to go pear-shaped for Alice as she discovers a naked stranger swimming in the pool. He wonders towards the house just after the phone-rings, and he thinks Alice is calling the police, so flees. She has actually been called by Tony, a seemingly insignificant wrong number (they never are, of course), and she tells him of the man in her pool and how scared she was and hangs up.

Much of the early chapters in the book are well-written and undeniably tense page-turners - Alice creeps round the house in the dark whilst sensing someone might be nearby and this feeling does rub off on the reader. After Midnight goes downhill from their though sadly, as much of the horror elements are pushed aside for bizarrely-placed sex-scenes (she has sex with a landlord of somebody she accidentally kills, about twenty minutes after meeting him!). After Alice’s first accidental kill, she finds a remarkable knack to causing people great pain and death often without meaning it. Each time she slips up she is worried whether the police will be on to her and so you have to read through a long-winded section about how she wipes each-and-every fingerprint away from the scene, and this happens far too many times and the amount of problems she gets into means its just not convincing she could clear evidence that easily with a cloth.

One particular annoyance that stems from Alice not being the characters real name (narrating from the future) is that it is constantly explained and re-explained that she had to change it so no-one would recognise her real name and link her to the events in the book, nice idea and one time is acceptable but it appears in brackets even during conversations and tense scenes, at somewhat inopportune moments.

As each situation leads into another that is equally if not more improbable than the last, you look back in absolute bewilderment at the end of the story at how it ended like it did. The story appears to have no real direction to it as Alice is consistently changing her course-of-action. As a horror novel it is scary in places but becomes either too predictable or completely unrealistic so that you never become particularly engrossed.

I suppose because of the mish-mash of scenes and situations you will want to read to the end - more out of curiosity to see how Laymon has sufficiently tied-up the loose ends than out of genuine interest, and much like the ending, the book is pretty average. Generally, this is one to avoid, unless you are a complete horror fanatic.
 

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