Amara - Richard Laymon

...you everything that happens in Amara by Richard Laymon I will write the description that is on the book cover and then give my views on the story.

The cover description is:-
Amara, Princess of Egypt, the once beautiful wife of Mentuhotep the first, lies in her coffin in the Charles Ward Museum. She has been dead for 4000 years and she’s just an inanimate bundle of withered skin and desiccated bone. Or is she?
Barney the ...
...testify to anything.
Now Amara is free again, driven by an ancient need that can only be assuaged at the cost of human life. No one can oppose her, no bullet can stop her and nothing can kill her – for she is dead already…

Pretty scary stuff then? Well yes, the thing I like about Richard Laymon books is that the reading can often be uncomfortable and yet you carry on with a morbid fascination; not willing, or able to stop.
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Some book reviews tend to spoil the ending or purpose of the book. So rather than tell you everything that happens in Amara by Richard Laymon I will write the description that is on the book cover and then give my views on the story.

The cover description is:-
Amara, Princess of Egypt, the once beautiful wife of Mentuhotep the first, lies in her coffin in the Charles Ward Museum. She has been dead for 4000 years and she’s just an inanimate bundle of withered skin and desiccated bone. Or is she?
Barney the night watchman is the first to discover that the mummy’s coffin has been broken open. Then it’s the turn of two security guards to find that the Egyptian remains have been disturbed. It seems grave-robbers are at work; out to steal valuable artefacts, just as their kind have done for centuries. It’s a pity Barney and the guards can’t tell the authorities how the mummy came to be missing. But the dead can’t testify to anything.
Now Amara is free again, driven by an ancient need that can only be assuaged at the cost of human life. No one can oppose her, no bullet can stop her and nothing can kill her – for she is dead already…

Pretty scary stuff then? Well yes, the thing I like about Richard Laymon books is that the reading can often be uncomfortable and yet you carry on with a morbid fascination; not willing, or able to stop.

In Amara a selection of seemingly unconnected characters are introduced to the reader in such a way that you almost immediately like or dislike them.
Laymon puts meat on the bones of his characters so that you know how they might think or act in certain situations, whether they are good or evil and if you would like them to survive to the end of the book.

And their lies another bonus of Richard Laymon books; just because you’re the good guy in one of his stories does not automatically secure your survival. In other books of a similar nature when the good guy gets shot it is always in the shoulder, thus ensuring a painful, but not life ending, Injury. With Laymon no one is above a knife in the belly or a bullet in the chest and this, in my opinion, makes his books more believable and readable. Indeed, in Amara there are a few deaths of both good and bad guys.

Richard Laymon has a unique writing style; Amara flows effortlessly from page to page and does not seem to go off on many tangents. Contrast this to Stephen King who, in my mind, has become almost annoying to read. Stephen King’s early books are excellent to read but just lately he seems to use 10,000 words when 2,000 will do. Richard Laymon gives it to you as it is, no padding, just raw story telling at its best.

Sadly this could be the last new Richard Laymon book published, Richard had a heart attack and died on Valentines Day 2001, robbing the Mystery and Thriller genre of one of the best modern writers I have read. Let’s hope he had a stack of manuscripts stacked up ready to be submitted, to keep his fans appetites sated.
 

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