Books like Flesh

Ah, Laymon. I'm really torn as to how to rate this. I tend to rate within genre. So, as a successful Horror read, I'm thinking 3 1/2 to 4 stars. As I've said before, when it comes to Laymon, I feel I'm reading one of the most (gleefully) manipulative writers I've ever encountered. If you're a fan of cheesy 70s & 80s horror flicks, then Laymon is your man. He is the perfect distillation of what those movies were trying to achieve (and, let's face it, where few succeeded). Laymon's novels are often set at or near a university. So you're going to have very horny teenagers (often English majors (yeah!)) getting into trouble (but just about everyone in a Laymon novel is horny) right from the get-go. And you'll also have extreme, often shocking violence (and I have set Laymon novels down for a while (including this one) over some violent scenes that just freaked me out). But to counter that savagery, Laymon always offers up pretty funny dialogue and wacky characters. You can laugh, even though you're covering your eyes. That is the Laymon formula. I have dinged Laymon in the past for his excesses, but have now come to realize that's what he's selling. Excess. You either buy into it -- or you walk away. I've also come to respect his writing ability. There are some that think he was a hack writer, and to some extent that is true. This guy worked for a living, and he knew what sold. And what he liked to write. But he also had an M.A. in English from Loyola University. In a number of novels, it's not unusual to find references to Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Hemingway. Oh, it's done lightly enough, but you get the sense that Laymon actually knows these writers, has read them. As far as his own writing style goes, no Horror writer writes cleaner sentences. It's like eating potato chips. On the down side, you get the sense that he wrote quickly, with pages of unnecessary padding in some novels (not so much in this one however). Flesh is all of the above. A snake (or perhaps, more accurately, a tape worm) kind of thing invades a town. Once it gets in you, you want to kill and then eat your victim. It probably took Laymon 5 minutes to come up with the plot. But the fun is really with all the characters, and how they interact, the tongue in cheek dialogue that can be both horrific -- and then funny as hell:"Here's the interesting part: the body had been eaten. Quite a lot of the skin had been torn off, portions of muscle devoured." The cigar in Steve's hand was shaking. "She had bite marks all over her body. Some were just enough to break her skin, others took great chunks out of her. Her torso had been ripped open. Her heart had been torn out and partly eaten. Her head . . . she had been scalped. Her skull had been caved in with a blunt instrument, possibly a rock. Her brain was missing.""Holy fuckin' mayonnaise," Barney muttered.I don't think it's an accident that a character named "Barney" is the chief of police. The above scene reads like it came right out of Tarantino's Grindhouse/Planet Terror. What follows are various murderous escapades, and a bit of clunky plotting that was obviously aimed for a result you can see a mile away (and I almost dinged this book a star because of that). What saved the novel for me is its outrageousness. I was totally on board with the novel when a character showed up, dressed in tight leather pants, gasoline, and a machete. This is when Laymon introduced Aztecs and Cortez into the novel. That inspired WTF! moment got that star back pronto.