Island / Richard Laymon

Another horror novel by Richard Laymon.

Island tells the story of a shipwrecked family, stranded on a seemingly deserted island after their yacht was blown up nearby. There are four women: Billie, Kimberley, Connie and Thelma and there are three men: Andrew, Keith and Rupert. Another man is Wesley who was aoard the yacht when it exploded (or so it would seem). Rupert is the hero of the novel which is written in the form of a journal which Rupert keeps.

On their first night there, Keith is murdered. They find him hung from a tree.

On the second day, Andrew is murdered, and Wesley turns out to be alive and the killer. He blew up the yacht to capture the whole family on the island. Thelma, Wesley's wife, cannot bear to see the others fight him, so she runs off and joins him after trying to wipe out Rupert.

At first, the survivors believe that Wesley is after money, because their family is rich, and killing them all would leave him as a sole heir. But as they realize that he goes for the men and leaves the women unscathed, they realize that his goal is much more sinister and twisted.

After a surprise attack in which Rupert is left for dead by Wesley and Thelma, he finds himself alone and searches the island for sign of the other three women.

He finds them imprisoned by Wesley and Thelma and kept for their psychotic pleasures.

Here the final battle between Rupert and the joint forces of Wesley and Thelma takes place.

Review:

Island is a terrific horror novel. It is graphic as are all of Laymon's novels and this one involves sexual depravity as well. It is not for the squeamish, for it filled with cruelty. But it is a very recommended read. It is fast paced, well written, with believable characters and well established dialogues. It is also damn fun to read.

One starnge thing in all of Laymon novels is the way in which women seem to recover from rape: as if at ease. That's about the only thing that I found wrong with the novel.

Bite / Richard Laymon

Bite tells the story of a guy called Sam. Sam is a regular guy leading a pretty mundane life when one night the love of his life whom he hadn't seen since high-school comes to his door wearing nothing but a robe. This is a pretty exciting turn of events as far as Sam is concerned but Cat (that's short for Cathrine) has a huge favor to ask of him. She tells him that over the last year she has been plagued by a vampire. This vampire, called Elliott out of all things, has been paying her nightly visits and sucking her blood as well as doing other things to her (rape mostly).
Cat asks Sam to come with her back to her house, hide in the closet and then kill Elliott with a stake through the heart when he dines on Cat.
At first Sam is skeptical to say the least, but he cannot stand to let this chance of getting Cat back into his life slip by, so he agrees.
And indeed, come midnight, he watches from the closet as Elliott swoops into Cat's bedroom in his black cape and starts to suck her blood.
Sam comes out of the closet with the stake in one hand and a mallet in the other and hammers into Elliott's back. The blow isn't sufficient to kill and Elliott lunges at him, biting him with steel fangs which he had placed on his own teeth. Cat finishes the job by driving the stake deeper into Elliott.
Sam and Cat decide to take Elliott to a deserted location and bury him.
They drive off towards the deserts of Nevada when they get a flat tire and have to get off the freeway. It is night and they stumble upon a man with long white hair who asks them for a ride. Since they don't know the way they agree and pick up Snow White (the hitchhiker's nickname). This turns out to be a bad decision as White is homicidal and once he gets wind that they are carrying a vampire in their trunk, he decides that he must have Elliott's body so he could remove the stake come nightfall and allow Elliott to turn him into a vampire and thus attain immortality.
Cat and Sam give him the slip in a roadside diner so White kidnaps a van with two inhabitants.
He follows Cat and Sam, and sends one of his hostages to inform them that they should follow him or else they will have the blood of the remaining hostage on their hands.
Reluctantly, Sam and Cat follow White to a secluded dserted mine where they have a final showdown with him and with his two hostages who turn out to be a menace in their own right.

Review:
I have read many Richard Laymon novels and this is one of the worst. The story is a bit farfetched, especially the ease in which Sam is persuaded to kill Elliott. The story is thin and ludicrous and bloody as hell without it serving the story at all. It is very readable but not as entertaining as Laymon's other novels.