« The Love Of A Good Woman - Alice Munro | Main | 52 Books in 52 Weeks - July 2008 »

August 01, 2008

Quake - Richard Laymon

Quake - Richard Laymon

Book 31 in my 52 books in 52 weeks in 2008

I read a fantastically funny/creepy/perverted horror book by Richard Laymon called "Island" many years ago. I've tried a few others over the intervening years, but nothing has ever come close to that first one.

Laymon is a great writer and gives plenty of suspense and adrenalin pumping prose, but a novel needs more than that. There is a great big hole in the center of "Quake" which never gets filled in. Why would an earthquake cause people to suddenly turn into murdering savages? A certain amount of looting and pillaging might be expected when it's first realised that the police are far too busy to chase down and catch everyone. In this story, the quake causes masses of people go completely homicidally crazy. But not all of them - many are unaffected.

It is left to the reader to speculate on the causes of this frenzy, but we just do not have enough information. even when you get to the end, and I won't give that away, you haven't enough to go on give any kind of closure to the story. I found this aspect very frustrating.

Some of the action is pretty good, Laymon can build tension and excitement. But a lot of the situations are very contrived and unrealistic. As in the famous comic strip 'Jane' from years ago - the girls seem to lose their clothes for no good reason quite a lot of the time.

Definitely an 'X' rated book, and unfortunately, not a great read.

Posted by se71 at August 1, 2008 02:32 PM

Comments

Post a comment

Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)


Remember me?