Bite [Mass Market Paperback]

Richard Laymon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1999

Sam hasn't seen his first love, Cat, for 10 years. But now she's back and is asking for help to kill a vampire. Sam doesn't believe in vampires, but he does believe the marks on Cat's body. Are they self-inflicted, or is there really a vampire?

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

One of the benefits of Dorchester's ambitious horror line--the only such line from a major American publisher--is the return of Laymon to domestic mass market. Laymon's vigorous, daring tales were popular here in the 1980s, but recently he has been overlooked by mainstream American houses (though he sells well in Britain and is published here by specialty houses, e.g., Cemetery Dance, The Midnight Tour, 1998). It's a shame, then, that his reentry to our paperback racks comes with this novel (published in Britain in 1996), not one of his best. A kind of sequel to The Stake (1991), the story opens as Santa Monica narrator Sam, 26, is visited by old flame Cat: she wants him to kill Elliot, an unwelcome nightly visitor whom she claims is a vampire. Sam agrees, slaying Elliot with a stake in a scene that, typical for Laymon, is bloody, tinged with eroticism and unfolds a whisker away from black humor. The remainder of the novel details Sam and Cat's violent misadventures, including run-ins with homicidal drifters, as they try to dispose of the body. There's some thematic play about the vampire in us all, and Laymon's writing is as crisp and gleefully malevolent as ever, but the characters are thin and the plotting is too linear, incident piled upon incident, dissipating suspense. Still, Laymon fans won't want to miss this one. (June)

Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Richard Laymon was born in Chicago in 1947 and grew up in California. Four of his books have been shortlisted for the Bram Stoker Award, which he won in 2001 with THE TRAVELLING VAMPIRE SHOW. Among his many acclaimed works of horror and suspense are THE STAKE, SAVAGE, AFTER MIDNIGHT and the three novels in the Beast House Chronicles: THE CELLAR, THE BEAST HOUSE and THE MIDNIGHT TOUR. Sadly, Richard Laymon died in February 2001. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 378 pages
• Publisher: Leisure Books (June 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0843945508
• ISBN-13: 978-0843945508
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (90 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,155,661 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars (3.5) A different type of Laymon novel, March 6, 2006

By 

Adam Craig (Columbus, OH) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Bite (Mass Market Paperback)

Bite is supposed to be a vampire novel. At least, that is what I expected when I picked it up. I've read a few of Richard Laymon's vampire novels before, and I enjoyed most of them a great deal, so my expectations were fairly high for this one. The weird thing about this book is that it really isn't about vampires at all. The main characters have to deal with a "vampire" in the first 50 pages or so, but after that, the novel is more about atmosphere and dialogue between the two main characters than it is about vampires at all.

Sam and Cat were high school sweethearts. When high school ended, however, Cat went off and did her own thing, leaving Sam out in the cold, always wondering if he would ever have the girl of his dreams back again. Imagine Sam's surprise when Cat shows up at his door late one night wearing just a bath robe. Cat tells Sam she needs a favor, and Sam is anxious to help her out any way he can until Cat informs him exactly what the favor is. Cat has been allowing a vampire to come and suck her blood every night for the past year. She lays in bed at night, and he comes and bites her wherever he pleases, always taking just enough to quench his thirst, and nothing more. Well, Cat has had enough, and she wants Sam to come over and help her kill Elliot, the vampire in question. Sam doesn't really believe here, but decides to go with her. Once they get to her apartment, Sam hides and witnesses Elliot having his way with Cat, and they drive a wooden stake through his heart, killing him instantly. Once Elliot is taken care of, Sam and Cat set off on a road trip to dispose of his body as far away as possible. Of course, nothing really goes right on this trip, starting with a flat tire that leads to Sam and Cat running into a really weird, creepy, interesting character who calls himself Snow White. Snow White hitches a ride with them until he gets just a little too weird and they ditch him. Once the ditching happens, all Hell breaks loose for Sam and Cat, and the book turns into a sort of hostage thriller. And vampires never really coming into play again until near the very end.

This book was pretty good, overall, but it was just totally different than I expected. Laymon devotes a great portion of the novel to developing the relationship between Sam and Cat, and he develops it very well. Also, the Snow White character is probably one of the best characters that I've ever come across in a Laymon novel. He's dangerous, funny, and creepy all at the same time. He makes a great villain, as that is what Laymon is best at, making us hate the villain. We do get a couple of annoying characters later on, but everyone always gets what they deserve, which is par for the course in a Laymon novel. This isn't one of Laymon's best, jaw-dropping novels, but it is good at what it does. The dialogue is really good at some points, pretty bad at others, but always interesting and sometimes funny. The small role that vampires do play is all good stuff, and Laymon does a good job of keeping the characters' fear of vampires in the background throughout the whole book. Even though Sam and Cat aren't even sure they actually believe Elliot was a vampire, they are always nervous and thinking about it throughout the whole book, and the ending fits the feel of the book perfectly. Laymon knew what he was doing when it comes to writing horror novels, and this one fits the bill pretty well, even though it doesn't take a normal approach to the vampire story.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars It Bites, November 8, 2003

By 

Lonnie E. Holder "The Review's the Thing" (Columbus, Indiana, United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Bite (Mass Market Paperback)

It's been a while since I've read a "vampire" story. I've read several of Anne Rice's excellent books, and of course everything Stephen King has written set in Salem's Lot. Given the excellence of the aforementioned books any author trying to write a vampire story has much to measure up to. Unfortunately this tongue-in-cheek effort by Richard Laymon makes little effort to be excellent, and is instead a weird combination of coincidences with a fair amount of sex and more than a little perversion. I was intrigued by the story line, and kept thinking the author was going to really turn this story into something, but instead the bulk of the story is a running chase between a psycho by the ironic name of Snow White and the two principal characters, Sam and Cat (Catherine).

There is a knock on Sam's door one night, and there is the girl he has loved his whole life standing in the door in a robe asking for him to come with her. Sam quickly finds he has landed in his own version of "Blue Velvet," standing in a closet waiting for a vampire with the fearsome name of Elliot to show up. Elliot is staked reasonably quickly and our murderers now have to dispose of him. I say him because he's a vampire, and as we all know, vampires may not be dead even when you think they are. Sam and Cat make a mess of getting Elliot into Cat's car, spending a fair amount of time on the details of how messy they got and cleaning everything up. In a way, all this action is still background for the story.

Sam and Cat then take off into the desert to go find a place to get rid of Elliot. Coincidence number one happens when they have a blowout, which may have been a gunshot, and run into a big guy by the name of Snow White. White states that he was forced off the highway by a gunshot. Through a series of not too smart actions, Snow White finds out that Sam and Cat have a vampire in the trunk of their car. Snow White volunteers to help them get rid of the vampire. As if this book wasn't already weird enough, it gets even weirder.

Sam and Cat try to get away from White while in the area of Inyokern and Ridgecrest, California, and actually make it, zipping through Trona (which really does have quite an odor to it - I've been there) toward Death Valley. White catches up with them by using a van driven by two teenagers that he kidnapped. From this point forward the book is cat and mouse between the five characters until the end of the story, which I'll not reveal in any more detail, except to say that the violence and sex are taken up at least one or two notches from the earlier portion of the book.

The primary problem with this book is that Laymon tried to put too much into the book. There is as much sex in this book as there is violence, and more sex than vampirism. There are way too many coincidences. There are too many places where events are wrapped up too neatly. While many parts of the book are bloody and sexual, and would seemingly call for a serious note, there is quite a bit of tongue-in-cheek. Ultimately the juxtaposition of coincidences and overlapping story focus distracted me to the point that I could no longer consider the novel as a serious story.

This novel is not a bad novel, but it's not all that good either. For fans of vampire novels this book will be somewhat of a disappointment. While there is some mystery to the story, the mystery is insufficiently complex to be more than a distraction. Read this book only if you run out of the much better books available.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The first of many, January 26, 2000

By 

"vampirequeen" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bite (Mass Market Paperback)

"Bite" was the first R.Laymon book I read. I love his style of writing - the way he immediately zaps you into the world of the story and you can't put it down. I must admit I'm no Stephen King fan as I basically find them rather boring and babble for too long. This book gets right to the point and keeps you interested. I must admit it never once actually "scared" me but then again I've not actually found one that does. It did make me want to keep reading though. Anyway, it's definitely worth reading. I'm now a keen R.Laymon fan.