Beware! - Richard Laymon

Whilst queuing at the checkout in Asda recently, I spotted Beware by Richard Laymon on one of the shelves for £1. I'd recently read The Lake by Laymon and enjoyed it, so I decided to chuck Beware on the conveyor belt and give it a go.

Strange things are afoot in the town of Oasis; the local supermarket is apparently haunted. Soon, a guard dog is killed and the supermarket owner is found wrapped and jointed on the butcher's block. Local ...
...are a little closer to home than she first thought.

I found the book to be readable, although I didn't really enjoy the story. The problem was the characters. I found them flat, unbelievable and rather clichéd. The protagonist is Lacey, the reporter. Very early in the story she is savagely beaten, raped, beaten again, raped again, held hostage in her own home and raped a third time. This happens in the space of a couple of days. These ... more

Whilst queuing at the checkout in Asda recently, I spotted Beware by Richard Laymon on one of the shelves for £1. I'd recently read The Lake by Laymon and enjoyed it, so I decided to chuck Beware on the conveyor belt and give it a go.

Strange things are afoot in the town of Oasis; the local supermarket is apparently haunted. Soon, a guard dog is killed and the supermarket owner is found wrapped and jointed on the butcher's block. Local reporter Lacey Allen investigates, and finds that these supernatural happenings are a little closer to home than she first thought.

I found the book to be readable, although I didn't really enjoy the story. The problem was the characters. I found them flat, unbelievable and rather clichéd. The protagonist is Lacey, the reporter. Very early in the story she is savagely beaten, raped, beaten again, raped again, held hostage in her own home and raped a third time. This happens in the space of a couple of days. These horrific ordeals seem to have no affect on her or her behaviour, and she displays nothing more than wariness of the perpetrator after his identity is revealed. The love interest for Lacey is Scott. I found Scott to be unbelievable also. Scott writes spy thrillers for a living; he's a novelist. In no time at all, Scott is running around, duffing people up, performing feats of incredible marksmanship and setting people on fire. Does writing about a James Bond style character make you a James Bond style person? Of course not, this is rubbish. The third main character is Dukane. When we are introduced to him, he is described as a well trained, highly motivated ex-special ops guy working as a private investigator/mercenary. Yet half way through the story he seems to flounder, losing all capacity for tactical thinking. Dukane is another poor character. Perhaps Laymon got Scott and Dukane mixed up?

What I disliked the most in this story was the violence. Most of the violent acts were directed at women, and most were sexual in nature. I felt that certain scenes were too close to rapist pornography for comfort. It's as if Laymon set the bar so high early on, that in order to keep up the momentum, he had to make the story more and more violent as it went on. I felt that this robbed the story of its initial tension as it simply became a catalogue of assault and battery.

This book has an RRP of £6.99. I only paid £1 for it, so I suppose it's not all bad. I wouldn't recommend this book.
 

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