To Wake the Dead [Hardcover]

Richard Laymon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 2003

An ancient beauty . . .

Amara was once the Princess of Egypt, the beautiful wife of Mentuhotep the First. Now, 4000 years later, she and her coffin are merely prized exhibits of the Charles Ward museum. Her lovely face and strong, young body are no more. If you were to look at her today you would see only a brittle bundle of bones and dried skin. But looks can be very deceiving. . . .

A missing mummy . . .

Barney, the museum’s night watchman, is the first to make the shocking discovery that the mummy’s coffin has been broken open. He immediately assumes it’s the work of grave-robbers who care nothing about the sanctity of the dead. But Barney doesn’t have a chance to do anything about it. Then two security guards come upon the open coffin and they too believe that the mummy has been stolen. What else could sane men think? By the time they realize the unbelievable truth, it’s far too late for them to do anything . . . ever again.

The walking dead!

Now Amara is once again freed from the cramped confines of her coffin, free to walk the earth, free to stalk her prey. Free to kill. Nothing can satisfy her deadly bloodlust. And no one can stop her. You cannot kill what is already dead.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Published last year in the U.K. as Amara, this exuberantly entertaining horror novel is grade-A Laymon, certainly his strongest to be issued stateside since his death in 2001. (When the market for his novels dried up here in the 1990s, this critically neglected author continued to publish and to sell well both in the U.K. and Australia.) As is often the case with Laymon, three plot strands loop through the narrative, braiding at novel's end to garrote the reader. The three are the murderous rampage of a resurrected female mummy in southern California (this plot line also includes an exciting first-person reminiscence set in 1926 Egypt by the man who excavates the mummy from its tomb); the nighttime meditations of a lonely young blind woman in California; and the ordeals of assorted victims kidnapped to an underground prison where they are sexually abused, sometimes slain, by unseen predators when the lights go out. The plot thread involving the mummy is the least interesting, because the staggering ferocious monster at its core shows as little character as the mummies of old Universal horror flicks; she's simply a force to be fought, though Laymon raises plenty of goose pimples here. The meditations of the blind woman sound a sad note that reverberates throughout and deepens the surrounding horrors; and truly amazing-inventive and transgressive-are the scenes set in the underground chamber, tours de force of pitch-black horror. Like all good Laymon novels, this one hurtles from start to finish-never mind the large cast and tripartite plot-and as in all Laymons, the sex, violence and violent sex will leave even jaded readers gasping. Bring on the popcorn. Laymon is back.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Richard Laymon is the author of over 30 novels and 65 short stories. Though a native of Illinois and a long-time Californian, he is also well known in Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand, as well as much of the rest of the world, where he is published in 15 foreign languages. He has written such acclaimed novels as No Sanctuary, Island, Among the Missing, One Rainy Night, In the Dark and Bite. The Traveling Vampire Show won a Bram Stoker Award for Novel of the Year in 2001. Two of his earlier novels (Flesh and Funland) and a short story collection (A Good Secret Place) had previously been nominated for Bram Stoker Awards as well.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 386 pages
• Publisher: Leisure Books; 1 edition (September 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0843951044
• ISBN-13: 978-0843951042
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,328,016 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Horrror-black, no cream-no sugar!, February 15, 2004

By 

Eric L. Hoheisel (Haslett, Mi United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: To Wake the Dead (Hardcover)

An undead mummy is stalking the halls of a natural history museum. Several captives are imprisoned in an underground vault and sexually tortured in bizarre ways. These are the two main plotlines in a twist and turn filled pulp horror novel from the late Richard Laymon. There are suprises around every corner, laughs and plenty of extreme gross-outs. If you have never read Richard Laymon before this is a fine place to start, but beware: this is undiluted horror-black, no sugar, no cream, but plenty of blood, sex and torture.

Also recommended: BLOOD ROAD by Edo Van Belkom, THE CHURCH OF DEAD GIRLS by Stephen Dobyns, and RISEN by J. Knight.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book is a Ripper!!, May 31, 2004

By 

Chris (Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: To Wake the Dead (Hardcover)

I picked this up for a bit of gratuitous escapism and it turned out to be a really enjoyable book. OK, so it isn't in the same class as a good Stephen King novel, but Laymon wastes no time in dropping you into the deep end and doesn't get lost along the way. This story is less of a supernatural chiller and more of a splattering gore-fest. The book is actually a very good analogue to the classic B horror movies that were spawned in the 70s - Bravo! It is intentionally confronting as Laymon seemingly tries to squeeze strong scenes into every chapter and this might disturb some people or indeed many. But, if you are looking for a somewhat tongue-in-cheek, page-turning book, that makes no apologies, then this is worth a read.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars strong mummy tale, September 18, 2003

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: To Wake the Dead (Hardcover)

In 1926 Robert Callahan accompanied his father to Egypt and through an unusual set of circumstances found the tomb of Amara, the favorite wife of Mentuhotep I. He unknowing opened the magic seal that prevented her from walking the night and actually saw the body of the man she had killed. He finds an Egyptian mystic to fashion two seals that will keep her in her coffin and when that is done he smuggles her home to add the sarcophagus to the family's Egyptian antiquities collection.

In the present thieves enter Robert's home and break the seal that binds Amara. Freed, she kills Robert before returning to her resting-place. The collection is willed to the Charles Ward Museum but at night Amara walks, killing anyone whom gets in her way. She looks for her infant son once buried with her and will not rest until she finds him. The police refuse to believe there is a killer mummy stomping around, but one man knows the truth and is bound by his promise to Robert to find a way to stop the mummy's reign of terror.

Richard Laymon is an award-winning author and after reading this book it is easy to see why. Unlike the recent Mummy tongue in cheek (wrap?) movies, TO WAKE THE DEAD is a very scary novel, so frightening that readers will go to bed with the lights on. The author has given the mummy quite a personality without her ever saying one word and somehow he makes her believable to the audience and that is what makes Mr. Laymon so good because few horror novelists ever achieve the stark realism he attains.

Harriet Klausner