Beware of Laymon’s ‘Beware’
I can accept a car with a killer personality.
I can accept a little girl who can start fires with her mind.
I can accept dead pets coming back to life.
I can also accept ghosts, the Apocalypse, killer plagues, demons and curses.
Really, not a problem.
What I can’t accept is a female protagonist so poorly written that I’m distracted by my own scoffing.
Such was the case with Richard Laymon’s “Beware.”
Reporter Lacey Allen begins investigating strange happenings at the local market in her small town of Oasis. A meat cleaver flies through the air on its own. A dog is killed inside the store. Lacey discovers the store’s owner butchered and neatly packaged. After finding the mutilated owner, Lacey herself is attacked and raped. She doesn’t tell the police because she can’t identify her attacker. She quickly goes home to take a hot bath, locking herself in her bathroom, where she is attacked again … and raped … again … and again.
Lacey gets away from her attacker and quickly holes up at a hotel in a nearby city. Though she has been raped three times and is beaten and bruised she decides to get some sun. While at the pool a man approaches her and begins flirting. She tells him to buzz off, but he’s persistent. She gives in and begins chatting with him. He’s Scott Bradley, a writer, and it doesn’t take long for Lacey to fill him in on her story. Including the fact that her murderous attacker has never been seen and seems to be invisible. Scott thinks this would make a best-selling book, and he has the hots for Lacey, so he takes on the role of protector.
So of course some bad stuff happens, and the story moves along pretty quickly. Just days after Lacey has been raped THREE times by a killer, she’s knocking boots with some guy she has just met. Puuuleeezz. That’s absolutely absurd.
But wait … it gets better.
After a series of events, they have the killer trapped. They’ve had opportunity to kill him, and he deserves it, but Scott wants to get his stupid story. During an attempt to rescue another victim, Lacey agrees that they should free the killer so they can use his special abilities to their advantage. Guess what happens? You got it. He knocks Scott out, attacks Lacey and rapes her again. Are you kidding me? Seriously. Shoot the guy’s ding-dong off already.
Laymon is lauded as one of the best in the horror genre, but he certainly falls flat with this stinker. I kept waiting for Lacey to go all “I Spit on Your Grave,” but it never happens. Ultimately this was an eye-rolling read, and from now on I’ll probably pass on Laymon.
