Slap Happy Fun Time

 Your Secret Admirer - Carl Laymon                                                                                                                               I know you're asking yourself why I'm reading a cheesy young adult novel but more importantly why am I reviewing it? The answer is simple. Your Secret Admirer was written by none other than the late Richard Laymon and I wonder how he felt about this novel when he started gaining a cult following. Did he know that fans like me would actually track it down just to show them off in their collection? It's funny to see Night In The Lonesome October, Funland and Bite standing next to a book called Your Secret Admirer. There's really no comparison between this and his later novels which is kind of the point. What's great about it is that Laymon gets right to the mystery which is who the secret admirer could be. I remember reading a few young adult horror novels and some of them were great. R.L. Stine really raised

 Beware! - Richard Laymon                                                          Richard Laymon is not only one of my favorite authors, he's also a huge influence on my own writing. Beware! is one of his earlier works and it shows in the early going. It's almost as if he wants to make up for the past mistakes of The Woods Are Dark by tapping into mainstream horror and it almost works The problem with Woods was that the failure wasn't his. His publisher gave him a crappy cover and hacked away half of the book. He has a distinct, almost frenetic writing that pulls you in from the opening paragraph. What it lacks is the usual Laymon trademarks, it more than makes up for in plot and pacing. Beware! is an updated version of the Invisible Man, but here, there's nothing redeemable about the guy. He uses his invisibility to create as much mayhem as possible. Laymon has created a villian that is truly evil and as the novel goes on you get a front row seat at just how evil he i

 Mine - Robert R. McCammon                                                                   I've heard a lot about McCammon yet the only experience I've ever really had was with Blue World a short story collection. I can only remember bits and pieces of it and I have tried, and failed to read Swan Song. Mine was picked up on a whim and I thought I was going to read a straight up horror novel but to be fair, it's not, but that's not a bad thing. What we have is a story with multiple threads weaving the plot together while the core focus is on Mary Terror and the baby she's stolen to present to a cult leader. As I read about how easy it was to kindnap the baby it was unsettling and couldn't happen these days. You simply can't go into a hospital wearing a nurses uniform and just snatch someone's kid. There are two stories being told here and each plot is given equal time. You have the crazy hippie who was a memeber of a radical group called The Storm Front