Beware

Richard Laymon is always good for a quick read. His books tend to be heavy on the action and light on the exposition, which is sometimes needed for reading pleasure. (Not that I've been reading excruciatingly heavy books lately) I literally read this over the course of a day - starting on the metro ride to work and finishing at lunch the next day.

BEWARE follows most of Laymon's tropes - mad killer, gory violence, rape, isolation, occult practices, and sex. What Laymon does is make it fresh and give it some twists. I was expecting a ghost story and it wasn't. Nor was it a run of the mill serial killer or supernatural beast story. It was all of these and more. Laymon's imagination just runs wild.

If you enjoy Laymon, it is a fun and fast read. But the book does depict brutal rapes and killings, so it is not for everyone. Even I can only read Laymon once in a while because he is so over the top.

Also for a dead man (He died in 2001), he has had more novels come out posthumously than Tupac has had albums. I know most of these are rereleases of earlier books that were not published in the U.S. or went out of print quickly, but they keep coming out. Not that I am complaining. His is a voice that is almost unmatched in the horror genre.