Customer Reviews

The Lake

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Leigh is a beautiful woman with a dark past; her 18-year-old daughter, Deana, is equally as beautiful. Deana has a boyfriend...until he is murdered by a psychotic killer in a chef's hat. Suddenly, mother and daughter are thrust into a living nightmare, that will wind up where it began: 18 years ago...

"The Lake" is the first Laymon novel that I did not enjoy reading. Yes, it had its moments--Laymon is a great horror author, and creates suspenseful situations better than anyone else. However, there is a reason this book was not published during his life: it's not finished. Reading the last couple hundred pages, you can tell where Laymon intended--if he were to publish the book--to go back and rewrite things. Some of the writing is actually horrible (and Laymon normally has a good sense of word usage). The plot isn't fleshed out; in fact, it's glued together in some spots...well, probably more like duct-taped. There are times when Leigh and Deana seem like real people, but those instances are few and far between. If Laymon had gone back to this novel, and had finished it, it could've been great; as it is, it was a mistake to publish this. If you have never read a Laymon novel before, do not start here, I beg you. Richard Laymon was one of horror's greatest authors; "The Lake" is probably his worst book. Read "The Traveling Vampire Show," "Island," "Bite," or one of the many other Leisure re-issues. Not this one; it is definitely not representative of Laymon's work.

Call me crazy but I loved this book! I walked by it three times, on three separate occasions and hesitated based on the lukewarm and bad reviews it got here but I'm happy I finally got the guts to trust my own instinct and I got it anyway. I don't see how this was bad nor boring, are we reading the same book here?? What's going on is what I asked myself, because I was waiting for those bad parts to happen but instead the book pulled me into the insane story and I literally could not put it down.

Laymon writes some pretty gory, intense and horrific scenes and this book started with one of them. If you don't like that kind of a book, then stick to gentler Dean Koontz, whom I also like and who suits more people's palates. In a nutshell this story is about Leigh, the mother who has some past secrets that connect her to the lake and its inhabitants. Her past comes to haunt her later as her own child ends up a target, perhaps by a random madman or someone that Leigh has wronged in the past. The story follows the past and the future and delivers a dynamite suspense and plenty of steamy lustful scenes.

The Lake is a vortex of sorts, a place where teenage Leigh went to when her parents send her away in order to calm down and relax, instead her hormones got in the way and she ended up meeting Charlie. I have never in my life read a book where the female characters were this horny, but I got over it and it made the story tighter. I was fascinated reading about Lake Wahconda where one hot summer she had a lusty affair that ended up in a tragedy that would haunt her for longer than she knew. The descriptions of the warm days, the kayaking, the fishing, food and happiness she felt at the beginning were wonderful to read, I could see the glassy black surface of the lake as she rested on the pier. Happy days were interrupted after a love affair gone badly. Her daughter Deana was born nine months after that tragic day, as you can imagine what Leigh did with Charlie. Unknowns to Leigh and her Daughter, eighteen years later another tragedy strikes, as Deana and her boyfriend Allan are caught in a nightmare, where he ends up dead and Deana is chased by a man who took his life. She manages to get away but things are never the same again for her and her mother, as they are targets for as long as they are alive.

Both the mother and daughter try to move on and begin to get involved with men, who act questionably and who do not get too much trust form the reader. Laymon's writing made everyone a suspect, as bodies kept piling up and strange behaviors in the West house kept occurring on hourly basis. The story is not hard to follow but can be spoiled easy, as many men and women in it are entangled in Leigh's past, and who pose a secret threat to her and her daughter. Eventually one of them gets in a big mess and a kidnapping and the story takes on a wilder turn as the clues come together. I thought that the characters were fleshed out enough, as Laymon wrote many pages where their thought rambled on, making it realistic, as I know I think things through a lot when I'm in a jam.

Overall I rally enjoyed this tale, of Leigh's past and present, mixed up with creepy characters and her daughter getting involved with boyfriends of her own who were not to be trusted. Many perils awaited them and I loved solving the clues and puzzles as to who was the bad guy in sheep's clothes, which would put up a fight against two women who did not want to give up.

I'm a huge Richard Laymon fan. After spending hundreds of dollars on his domestic and import titles, I have read pretty much everything he has written. Needless to say, I was excited when I got my hands on "The Lake", but my excitement has been reduced to a general feeling of... "eh." The story held up for two thirds of the book, but by the end, I was just in awe of the ridiculous turns the plot had taken. Silly twists aside, the editing flaws alone are enough to put a person off. Did anyone proofread this before it was published? Look, if you want to read a good Laymon book, please try "Bite", "Body Rides", "Darkness, Tell Us", or, my personal favorite "Funland" (though for that one, you'll have to spring for a UK edition for now). They are all so much better than this particular book. Richard Laymon is one of my favorite writers, but this book just didn't do it for me.

Whoa! This book is all over the place.

Starts out in typical Laymon fashion with stone-cold-crazy killers, weird imagery, and night-time strangeness and devolves into a cliche-fest with goofy coincidences, deus ex machinae x10, huge sections of the book that do not belong or serve no purpose (the old lady thing was pretty off the wall), huge sections of the book that seem to be missing, and completely unbelievable female characters (even by Laymon standards, which is saying a lot). About halfway through the book, I started to get irritated and it was all I could do to finish it.

That said, this book was released well after Laymon's death and seems obvious that this is an early draft and something he had stored away to work on again later. I look at it as kind of a backstage peek into how a book might evolve from early draft to published work.

Interesting, and there are a few good ideas here that might make a good book or two, but not essential for Laymon fans. I'd recommend this only to serious completists or curious folk only.

I listened to the Audio version of this book, and I have to say it had so many annoying parts I got to the point of fast-forwarding chapter by chapter until I finally pulled it out and returned it to the rental company.

I love mysteries but not if I spend too much time thinking how stupid the people are....hello? Bad enough that the two gorgeous, beautiful and perfectly stunning heroines are threatened by TWO totally different murderers. But when one of them, ACCOMPANIED BY A POLICE OFFICER, finds a scrapbook of murder victims in another police officer's home and then BOTH are threatened by that police officer AND THEY JUST GO ON HOME after they get away from him??????

Oh, and when your daughter and you remain threatened by that same police officer, you go off to your business on a so-called emergency AND LEAVE YOUR DAUGHTER HOME ALONE???

TAKE HER WITH YOU!!!! EVEN IF her new boyfriend, who she's known all of about 3 days is coming over (new boyfriend part irritating too since original boyfriend only dead a week...and all because of her mother)

Daughter gets kidnapped by madman policeman... surprise.. surprise. Two new police officers are sent to the home to protect the mom....they get murdered and who does she call? The madman policeman's partner..and leaves her a voicemail.

Oh, and then she calls the daughter's boyfriend. Sorry dead police officers who were here to protect me, I'm not going to bother to call 911.

And new boyfriend's sister is GUESS WHO?? Madman police officer's long lost hairy sister who was supposedly murdered by her own father as an infant...which makes her poor perfectly gorgeous daughter's aunt.

So then ladies, let's travel a few thousand miles to catch this dangerous man all by ourselves!

This is when I finally quit. I can probably guess how it turned out.

As a teen, Leigh was a rebel protesting the Viet Nam War so her parents decided she needed a change of scenery sending her to her uncle an aunt's home in Wisconsin where she met studmuffin Charlie Payne. Leigh chased after the shy man who was intimidated by his mother until she finally caught him. They made love in an abandoned house, but as Charlie was leaving he fell through the floor, hit his dead, and died. His mother claimed Leigh killed her son, but the police ruled it an accidental death. She returned home pregnant.

Eighteen years later Leigh's daughter Deana is on a date with Allan when a man carrying a cleaver and wearing a chef's hat chases after them and kills the lad. The culprit is the former chef at Leigh's restaurant, who was recently fired. Macer, the detective in charge, becomes romantically involved with Leigh. When the police catch Allan's killer, Leigh feels safe, but she soon will learns she is wrong because someone is coming for her and her daughter.

Richard Laymon is a Bram Stroker award winning horror novelist who proves he can switch genre gears by writing a fantastic thriller as well. From the very beginning, the action explodes and just accelerates beyond warp speed and yet allows for a strong believable relationship between mother and daughter even when stress threatens to destroy it as both want to protect the other. The story line is loaded with surprises so that the audience never knows what will happen next. This totally absorbing crime thriller will have readers enthralled and unable to put it down until the last page is turned.

Harriet Klausner

I read this book with utter disapointment i am a big fan of Laymons, his better books are "Endless Night", "Come Out Tonight", "Savage" for the over the top violence and sex. "The Lake" has that but the story is confusing somethimes even stupid. did not like it and would not recomend as a first for someone looking to get into his work. Try the other titles mentioned above.

Although many of Laymon's standard techniques and theme's are present, the overall plot is a little more convoluted than in his other recent novels. The story centers around a mother and daughter who are having a hard time of life. The mother was a wild child of the 60's and was involved in something horrible. In the present, the daughter goes through something similar. Soon the pair dealing with the police on an almost hourly basis as they seem to have become a target for some sort of madman.

These two women definitely have a tough time as they just seem to have bad luck all around. Past troubles and present troubles entwine and combine to make sure that their lives are anything but smooth and happy. The ending, with its afterword, is also a little unusual for Laymon's novels but it works.

Fans of COME OUT TONIGHT will see some similarity with character creation and implementation and many will recognize Laymon's tendency to show that dark things wander and prowl the dark nights. The title is a little unusual as it is a long time before there is any lake to speak of. I was bothered by on scene where characters become totally stupid and leave the daughter alone and unprotected as if it were the right thing to do instead of her going with her mother. But other than that it is fairly good but not one of Laymon's best. A few too many plot threads for many readers but a must for long-standing fans.

The Lake is a chaotic and creepy horror that will likely have readers flipping through the pages out of pure curiosity to see what happens next. Laymon's rumored forgotten tale is packed with a hatchet-wielding chef, a backwater mama's boy, hormonal teens, a spooky old-folks home and a sicko serial killer hell bent on revenge. On the receiving end of all this terror are a mother and daughter. Yes, they experience an accidental death, blamed for murder, witness a boyfriend's murder, are beat up, kidnapped, abused, conned, deceived, frightened, and nearly killed numerous times. All this would be an achievement if it were spread over several books instead of rolled into one. I understand this is fiction, but WHEW! Even I'm having a hard time buying it. To top it off, the women in the novel have a strange obsession with their breasts. They also take unrealistic risks (like jogging at night after being attacked), are too eager to mix sex after trauma and willingly give over easily to emotion and relationships. For example, after the traumatic loss of her boyfriend, Deana jumps quickly and trustingly into another relationship - may I add with lots of breast groping worthy of a bodice ripper. However, given the story line, murder, killer on the loose and physical and mental trauma, the insertion of sexual thoughts and actions by the victims is just plain weird and not in the good horror kind of way. I can't imagine any woman relating or reacting like either of these female characters. In addition, I'm still trying to figure out why Nelson the killer one-eyed chef and the old-crone were even necessary? The inclusion of these characters is deliberately misleading and disjointed. A few scenes go nowhere and are completely unfinished. I'm still wondering, `What the hell was that about?' Mommy Dearest (as the old-crone is called) should have ended up on the cutting room floor along with several other pages. I won't give away the ending, but lets say more breast groping is involved. To add insult, the last chapter is followed up with a `hereafter.' Now, I know some readers like this, but I can't stand the approach. I don't want pages of summary at the end of the book telling me what the characters eventually went on to do and how many children they had. Honestly, after 400 pages I shouldn't need a summary to wrap it up. The one shining light in the tale and saving grace occurs during the telling of Leigh and Charlie's story. This part of the novel had me intrigued and fully engaged in the tale. It was epic but unfortunately the second half of the novel slowly killed my wonderful memory.

Like a number of other reviewers, I feel this one is similar to a number of other releases after this wonderful authors death, it's clear he hasn't finished / fine-tuned it. I've enjoyed it and to be honest, less- than-perfect Laymon is better than many other horror writers best stuff. If you're new to Laymon, try to go chronologically through his work. It's very enjoyable feeling it develop and following the various themes that he develops and periodically revisits. If you're a veteran, read this one, it's still pretty riveting.