The Stake [Paperback]

Richard Laymon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2000

In an abandoned hotel in a California ghost town, horror writer Larry and his friends make a chilling discovery. By chance they stumble across a naked woman in a coffin with a stake driven through her heart. Was she a vampire or the victim of a gruesome murder?

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A novelist worries about the stake driven through the heart of a presumed vampire in this chilling horror story by the author of Flesh. Larry Durban, his neighbor Pete and their wives find the body of the young woman hidden in the basement of a ghost-town hotel. Pete persuades Larry, who has started writing a vampire novel, to bring the body home. Hoping for a great PR stunt, Pete plans to film the removal of the stake. But Larry has second thoughts. An old man tried to kill them when they picked up the coffin, suggesting that he, for one, believes in vampires. And Larry starts to have disturbing dreams about his "houseguest," whose finger bears a class ring identifying her as "Bonnie" and a onetime student at the high school that his own teenage daughter, Lane, attends. Even more disturbing is the deepening relationship between Lane and her English teacher, Hal Kramer. Early on, Laymon shows Kramer engaging in a bloody murder, thereby raising the possibility of a connection to Bonnie. By studying old newspaper clippings, Larry learns that numerous young women had disappeared at the same time as Bonnie, but surely, he tells himself, these were innocents, not vampires. By this point, the reader shares Larry's doubts, and the tension becomes electric.The novel's only flaw may be overindulgence in dialogue. But its lighthearted tone sets up some white-knuckle moments, and the ending is more than worthy of Laymon's buildup.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

Laymon's first hard-cover since his first book (The Cellar, 1980, not reviewed)--and a fine return it is as this high- spirited, prolific horror writer weighs in with a typically brisk and black-humored yarn about what a fellow horror author and his pals do when they find the stake of the title--embedded in a mummified corpse. Is the corpse a vampire? The Colorado ghost town where horror novelist Larry Durban, his neighbor Pete, and their wives find the body is eerie enough, but none of the four believes in vampires--although whoever killed the woman must have thought her a monster, and wouldn't all this make a nifty nonfiction book? So Larry writes several chapters about finding the corpse and about how he and Pete later returned to the hotel and stole the body, now hidden in Larry's garage awaiting his book-in-progress's climax, the pulling of the stake. Larry postpones that climax, though, because as he digs out the identity of the body--local high-school cheerleader Bonnie Saxon, a dead-ringer for his own daughter Lane but murdered 20 years back, along with several other girls, by one Uriah Radley--he becomes erotically obsessed with Bonnie, waking up next to her corpse. Meanwhile, in a major, thematically obvious subplot--monsters do exist--a real-life fiend invades Larry's family: Lane's English teacher, handsome Mr. Kramer, who molests and murders one of Lane's classmates, then sets his sights on flirtatious Lane, eventually raping her. And at the same time, Uriah Radley, escaped from an asylum and gripping a stake, tracks after Larry & Co., whom he believes to be vampires. All parties converge in a violent and twisty climax that spirals into a truly surprising, and surprisingly happy, ending. Spooky, sexy, and lots of nasty fun. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 512 pages
• Publisher: Pinnacle; New edition edition (May 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786012587
• ISBN-13: 978-0786012589
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,165,575 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In Your Chest, um, Face Horror, How Sweet It Is!, June 15, 2000

By 

Ryan Costantino (Nowhere, Special) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Stake (Paperback)

This was the first book of Richard Laymon's that I read, and if all his books are like this he's just earned himself another fan. The use of explicit violence and sex was so different from what most mainstream writers will allow (or be allowed, grrr, editors) in their books. The unabashed approach to horror and the use of rape (which is pretty high up there on my list of fears) is something not usually found in mainstream Horror. I can only think of one other author to pull out all the stops like this and that would have to be Bentley Little.

The way Laymon makes humans out to be more terrifying monsters than anything supernatural was great. Reading this was like watching some B-grade horror flick and I loved it. This book was near impossible to put down, I had to force myself to get some sleep. A highly original vampire tale that is not for the weak-stomached. I am definitely looking forward to reading more of Richard Laymon's work in the future, and if you take this book for a spin you will too.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Talk about a genre-breaker!, August 31, 2000

By 

Hobbes "Compulsive Writer" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Stake (Paperback)

I've been reading vampire novels for years, and have even written a few of my own (unpublished). Since cutting my eyeteeth on the greats like Stoker, Rice, and Lumley, to the random paperbacks by unknown authors, I thought I'd learned all their tricks. Richard Laymon proved me wrong.

This is not a vampire novel. This is a novel about being human in a dangerous, confusing, and above all unpredictable world. And that's exactly what makes it believable. The characters are real: full-fleshed and multi-faceted, with all the quirkiness of normal human beings. And whatever Laymon throws at them, they rise to the occasion admirably, with equal helpings of heroics and cowardice. The horrors they face are not just pulp-comic monsters, but far worse, because you can turn on the TV news and watch them happening every day. And yet there's still the underlying threat of the vampire...or is there?

There's so much more I'd like to write, but I wouldn't dream of spoiling the story. If you're a fan of vampire books, or the horror genre in general, this is a must-read, and you won't be disappointed. If you've never picked one up before, make this your first. You won't regret it.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Ehhh...Where are the vampires?, January 20, 2005

By 

Matthew King (Toronto, Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Stake (Paperback)

As a veteran reader of Laymon I'll be the first one to tell you that the man has written just as many misses as he has hits. For every classic like "Island" or "The Cellar" there are turkeys like "Endless Night", books so trivial and banal I almost feel like I should wrap them in cardboard. But the genius of Laymon is this: even with the stinkers, he keeps us reading. I will never accuse a Laymon novel, no matter how dumb, of being a slow or boring read. "The Stake" falls somewhere in between. The quality of Laymon's writing is excellent and the setup was good however he never develops his concept to the fullest. What could have been an explosive horror novel somehow falls flat.

Larry Dunbar is a writer of gruesome horror novels. Despite the grotesqueries he writes, Larry is just about the nicest, most well-mannered person you could ever meet. He lives in a quiet suburban home with his teenaged daughter and loving wife. One day on a road trip exploring a ghost town with his wife and two of their friends, Larry stumbles upon a corpse buried under the floor of a hotel. Turns out the corpse is (apparently) a female vampire with a stake in her heart. On a return trip with his friend Pete, Larry lugs the corpse back home and sets off to write a non-fictional account of this supposed vampire. But what if the vampire is not really dormant but ready to come back to life? What happens if you pull the stake? Larry is about to find out...

The central character being a horror writer, there are definite undertones of self-referentiality to this tale. The wife and daughter, the struggles with publishers & editors, the setbacks associated with being a writer of gruesome horror, I mean really Laymon is just writing about himself here. The self-referentiality doesn't bother me that much, at least he's not using his horror writer character as a veil attempt to pepper his novel with his own opinions (a la Bentley Little) but it does become very cheesy after a while. That's too bad because his writing quality is top-notch here; he's not filling pages with dialogue, but letting setting and mood take over. He effectively juggles two separate storylines involving different characters and blends them together in the end quite nicely.

I guess my main quelm with "The Stake" is how mellow of a horror novel it ends up being. There is practically none of the violence and nudity Laymon's become so famous (or infamous) for. Even worse, there's not much action either and the marketing of this book as a vampire novel is slightly off-putting. I mean a real vampire novel would have things to scare the reader such as oh I don't know...vampires? There is only one vampire in this entire novel and she spends the whole time lying motionless in a coffin with a stake in her heart while the rest of the characters run around dealing with all sorts of unrelated things. I had high hopes for "The Stake" especially since I wanted Laymon to redeem himself after disappointing me so much with his other vampire misfire "Bite". Oh well, I guess bloodsuckers were not meant to be the man's specialty.