Richard Laymon - After Midnight

[ohthehorror]

 

Headline 2012, kindle edition  

Alice is a nice name. Not her real name as she tells us a good few times during the course of her tale but a nice name nonetheless. I'm not a fan of stories told in flashback on the whole. I know she survived right at the very beginning of the book since she's here telling us about it herself so it strikes me as a bit of a flawed method, particularly in a horror novel where suspense is likely to play a part, or may do anyway. Alice is house-sitting for her friends come landlords for the week and gets herself into a bit of a spot when she accidentally kills Tony, a guy that dials a wrong number, gets talking to her and then decides to turn up unannounced to protect her after she tells him about the weird guy who takes a naked late night swim in the pool. He turns up at her door and gets a Sabre in the head for his trouble. I guess that's what you call 'unfortunate' then really. The intruder in the pool vanishes and Alice proceeds to make things worse with each and every decision she makes, killing again and again in a warped bid to make it all better.

Alice strikes me as seriously mentally unstable right from the start. Anyone who can kill and chop up bodies with little more than a nod and shrug and then carry on pretty much as though nothing unusual has happened deserves to be given a very wide berth in my view. Still, for all her faults there's something strangely likable about her. The very nonchalance that's in evidence as she goes about her various questionable activities is part of what makes her so attractive to me. That and her penchant for removing her clothes at every opportunity of course. I didn't spot any actual 'red gym shorts' on this occasion, which was a lot more disappointing than it should have been come to think of it, but there were cut off denim shorts and a lovely long, green skirt with a slit all the way up one leg. There was also an awful lot of running around with nothing more than a thong and a bra, and even the bra gets removed a good deal of the time too. Of course this being a Richard Laymon novel we get some wonderful descriptions of the way Alice's unfettered breasts swing delightfully from side to side as she runs, which is always nice.

If I were to pick fault, there are times where Alice simply lists things she's done instead of integrating it into the story. She actually goes as far as to say that her reasons for doing this are so we don't get bored by her telling us about it which at first glance seems like a good idea but then she does it a second time, then a third time and before long I'm wondering if I'm just going to have to skip parts of it simply to avoid the lists.

So after an extended killing spree and lots of nakedness and enough groping and fumbling to keep any Laymon fan going for a while we arrive at a very happy ending, which was kind of nice in it's own way and part of me really liked it and gulped back a little lump in the throat and so on and so forth, but the better part of me(wut??) was just longing for a bit of a twist or... well something a bit more unexpected. It didn't happen. Still, was a nice enough way to end it. It is nice to know though that if I ever choose the life of a deranged Sabre wielding maniac, it'll be relatively easy to get away with it and live happily ever after. Just me and my blonde and our van. Nice!

I'm thinking I might go with Flesh next. Looks like our red gym shorts girl appears on the first page! Can't argue with that.

[dem bones]

Steve Crisp

This is the one I got confused with Endless Night, so was delighted, on tackling it recently to discover it was one of the few I'd not previously read. Definitely one of his most cartoon-strip efforts, with seemingly everyone involved either a practising, semi-retired, or potential serial killer, and no point expecting too much logic as you'll simply not find it. Far better to leave it to Alice to do all the worrying, she's more than capable of handling herself. The climax pre-dates the grossest sequence in Stephen Volk's The Arselicker by almost twenty years.

[ohthehorror]

This had me intrigued,

‘Do you have a name?’ he asked.
‘No, actually I’m one of those people who isn’t that lucky.’
He laughed a little, and I smiled.
‘My name’s Alice,’ I said. (That isn’t really what I told him. I told him my true name, which is a secret as far as this book is concerned . . . unless you’re smart enough to find my hidden message.)
‘Hello, Alice,’ he said.

Hidden message? 

Edit: Oh, and that's from page 31 of 438 in the kindle version.

[dem bones]

May 31, 2015 19:55:04 GMT ohthehorror said:

This had me intrigued,

‘Do you have a name?’ he asked.
‘No, actually I’m one of those people who isn’t that lucky.’
He laughed a little, and I smiled.
‘My name’s Alice,’ I said. (That isn’t really what I told him. I told him my true name, which is a secret as far as this book is concerned . . . unless you’re smart enough to find my hidden message.)
‘Hello, Alice,’ he said.

Hidden message? 

Edit: Oh, and that's from page 31 of 438 in the kindle version.

Oh yeah, forgot all about that! If secret message there is, my guess would be that it appears early in the proceedings, i.e., prior to 'Alices's tip off, but would not be the least surprised if she's only playing games with us.

[mrhappy]

May 31, 2015 20:49:27 GMT dem bones said:

May 31, 2015 19:55:04 GMT ohthehorror said:

This had me intrigued,


Hidden message? 

Edit: Oh, and that's from page 31 of 438 in the kindle version.

Oh yeah, forgot all about that! If secret message there is, my guess would be that it appears early in the proceedings, i.e., prior to 'Alices's tip off, but would not be the least surprised if she's only playing games with us.

I'm not going to give the answer here so I don't spoil it but write down the first letter to the first word of every chapter (including the introduction). That will give you the name you are searchimg for ;-)

Mr. Happy

[ohthehorror]

May 31, 2015 21:11:40 GMT mrhappy said:

May 31, 2015 20:49:27 GMT dem bones said:

Oh yeah, forgot all about that! If secret message there is, my guess would be that it appears early in the proceedings, i.e., prior to 'Alices's tip off, but would not be the least surprised if she's only playing games with us.

I'm not going to give the answer here so I don't spoil it but write down the first letter to the first word of every chapter (including the introduction). That will give you the name you are searchimg for ;-)

Mr. Happy

Hah! That's amazing. I would never have seen that. How on earth did you find out about that? Does that name have any particular relevance do you think. I don't remember that surname cropping up at all?

[dem bones]

Fiendish! Thank you Mr. Happy, would never have thought to do that in a million years. Ramsey Campbell used a similar same device in one of his black magic shorts - think it was The Words That Count?