As I may have mentioned in previous posts, Richard Laymon is my favorite horror writer. Fortunate for me, since the guy published a slew of titles over the course of the thirty or so years he was active prior to his death in 2001. Unfortunate for me, since unlike, say, Stephen King who routinely has print runs in the millions, Laymon's books were only moderately successful here in the US prior to the late 90's when Leisure Publishing finally got him the attention he deserved, which makes collecting his stuff problematic and, occasionally, expensive.
Every day, for the next few days, I'll post about some of the off-beat, weird, or exotic pieces of my collection. Come back tomorrow for a look at some new goodies. Today, we're looking at Laymon's US hardcover releases from St. Martin's Press.
As always, all images shown are scanned directly from my own source material.
The Stake
Laymon successfully sold four novels to St. Martin's Press for hardcover release between 1991 and 1995, and they could not have picked a better one to start with than this 1991 edition of The Stake. Since I literally just talked about this one yesterday, there's no reason to reiterate the plot.
You'll also notice Stephen King's blurb on the cover -- St. Martin's Press had no problem using the likes of King or Koontz to upsell their other horror writers, unlike some of Laymon's other mass-market publishers who couldn't be arsed to include author blurbs even when provided.
The Stake sold well enough to warrant more than one printing (my copy is a 2nd printing), which was unusual for Laymon's US releases, especially for the time. The good news is that makes copies of The Stake more ubiquitous, and therefore less expensive. If you need a first edition, it'll cost about $40, while later printings go for about half that.
Midnight's Lair
The second St. Martin's hardcover release came in 1993, although it was based on a book originally published in 1988. In the mid-80's, Laymon visited Howe Caverns in New York with his wife and daughter. While there, their guide joked that they should stick close, since if the power to the lights went out, he had the only flashlight. The idea of a group of people trapped in an underground cavern when the lights went out went right to work in Laymon's imagination, and after returning home to California, he pounded out the manuscript for what became Midnight's Lair.
In this story, as in Laymon's imagination, are trapped underground in Mordock's Cave after a fire aboveground knocks out both the power and the elevator system. In order to escape, the group needs to trek through the darkness and break through a wall which separates the tourist area of the cave from the part no one is allowed to visit.
Unfortunately, Mordock's Cave is home to a vile and terrible secret, unbeknownst to the tourists or even the guides. Breaking through the wall has allowed a clan of feral monstrosities, quietly breeding and feeding in the dark over the decades, to enter the Cave system, and they're all too eager to add the tour group to their menu.
This book is Richard Laymon doing The Descent seventeen years before The Descent came out, and it's just as fast-paced and nightmarish. One of my favorite Laymon stories, in fact. My copy is a first edition, but I've never seen one that isn't, so I'm only aware of one print run on this. Despite that, it's not very expensive: similar to The Stake, it'll run about $20.
Savage
Savage is the only Laymon novel to carry a subtitle, although every US printing of the book omits it on the cover. Savage: From Whitechapel to the Wild West on the Trail of Jack the Ripper is easily Laymon's most ambitious novel up to the time of its publication (1994 here in the US), and possibly his entire career.
As the subtitle indicates, this is Laymon tackling the story of Jack the Ripper, accounting for why the Ripper seemingly vanished overnight from London's streets. According to Savage, the Ripper left England shortly after eviscerating his final victim, hopping passage on a ship to North America, where he would travel to the western frontier to continue doing what he was doing where there were fewer police to keep him in check.
Unbeknownst to the Ripper, someone knows who he is and where he's gone. Pursuing the serial killer across the Atlantic Ocean is Trevor Bentley: a fifteen year old British lad who cowered under Mary Kelly's bed as the Ripper had his way with her, and is determined to bring the killer to justice, even if it means traveling to the very edge of the American frontier.
Savage is a very different, more restrained story than what Laymon usually told. Although it still has scenes which mark it as a horror novel, it contains plenty of Western elements, and is the closest thing Laymon ever wrote to anything that could be classified as "Literature". It's unique, it's almost classy, and it's like nothing you'll ever read in your life.
Like Midnight's Lair, this one won't break your wallet either. My copy is an ex-library version acquired at a Friends of the Library sale, but you can find normal editions for around $20.
The Quake
This book in particular holds a special place in my heart, because this hardcover is the very first Laymon novel I ever read, all the way back in 1995 when I found it on the library's shelf of New Releases. It's the book that made me a Laymon maniac -- after a few years of reading Stephen King, finding Laymon was like a shot of adrenaline. King's a great writer, but he's also a rambler, content to shoot the breeze with you for a few minutes, then wandering off on tangents whenever they arrive, knowing you'll be patient enough to let him resume the tale in his own time. Laymon, by contrast, has no use for idle banter or chit-chat: his prose hurls across the page like a runner on Olympic qualifying day.
The Quake (and amusingly enough, it's only this edition which is entitled "The Quake"; every other edition is just "Quake") tells the story of the Banners, your ordinary, middle-class California family consisting of father Clint, mother Sheila, and teenage daughter Barbara. Clint is at work, Barbara has made it to school, Sheila is at home taking a shower after her morning workout, when a magnitude "holy shit!" earthquake rocks the state. Power and phone service is out all across the city, traffic grinds to a halt, fires rage out of control, buildings collapse, and police and emergency services are stretched to the breaking point.
Trapped on opposite sides of the city, Clint and Barbara both have to navigate the madness and get back to their house where, fortunately, Sheila is still alive, although trapped in the bathtub, pinned down and nude, giving pervy neighbor Stanley Banks all sorts of bad ideas about what he could do to the beautiful woman he now has all to himself.
While a logical look at Quake's storyline will reveal all sorts of flaws (seriously, the city goes from "ordinary day" to "Mad Max" in a matter of an hour or two), there's always something special about your first anything, and this was my first Laymon story.
Unfortunately, that nostalgia comes with a price as this was also the final hardcover published by St. Martin's Press, and as such there were fewer of them printed than any of the three previous books. My copy of this one set me back $50, which I was happy to pay (because nostalgia), and nowadays these go for between $40 and $90 depending on condition. If you just want to read the story, drop $6 on the UK paperback from Headline. As much as I love this book, it's definitely not worth the going rate.