There have rumours surrounding Richard Laymon for a number of years now - people think that Laymon is a pseudonym for an established author, perhaps, Stephen King himself. “Midnight’s Lair” is one of the books that fuel this debate. It was originally published under the name Richard Kelly and it is also one of the more extreme Laymon books. Take note, Laymon’s books tend to be twice (or even thrice) as gory and risky than your average horror book and so Midnight’s Lair really is a blood bath above the rest.
The story really is typically Laymon. It deals with the bestial side to humans and human nature. It is almost tempting to sound something of a H. P. Lovecraft comparison here. Lovecraft has written a number of short stories in which humans, trapped over a long period of time (or who have voluntarily retreated from the world) have ended up in a “de-evolved” state. Of course, H. P. Lovecraft was known to cut the pictures of scantily clad ladies out from the magazines that published his stories because he didn’t approve of them. That’s certainly not something I can see Laymon (who ever he may be) doing, in fact, Laymon makes really good use of scantily clad ladies in his own stories.
The plot, as with most Laymon books, is pretty simple. Tourists are out exploring a network of vast caverns - it is a guided tour, the sort of trip that is done a number of times daily. On this occasion though, the power fails and we follow the unfortunates around as they try to reach the surface. The catch, of course, is that those “de-evolved” humans I was talking about early also happen to live in the deeper, darker areas of the underground maze... and ... they are hungry!
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