Richard Laymon, The Lake

The Lake

Richard Laymon

Leisure, Oct 2004, $24.00, 384 pp.

ISBN: 0843954507

As a teen, Leigh was a rebel protesting the Vietnam War so her parents decided she needed a change of scenery sending her to her uncle and 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 storyline 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