BITE

By Richard Laymon
Leisure Books $5.50, pb reprint

I dare you to read the first six pages of Richard Laymon's Bite and stop reading. I dare you to avoid feeling the hook gouge its way into your psyche, sharpened point making sure you can't pull it out again. I dare you - but I know that Laymon will win.

You may remember from my review of A Writer's Tale in last issue that Laymon is an American writer much better known and appreciated in England. His books appear in hardcover first, then paperbacks which are reprinted over and over. In fact, his writing career is almost entirely British, except for the steadfastly loyal cult following he has amassed here due to some of his earlier books, which were published in the US (but mostly mishandled), in the pricy small press limited editions, and through the short stories he has published in various magazines. He writes somewhat bitterly - and rightly so - of his stalled US career in A Writer's Tale. But just as that book went to press (and was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award), something happened. The Leisure Books horror line happened, and Don D'Auria happened, an acquiring editor who is also a fan and connoisseur of the best writers in the business. And now, thanks to an editor who really understands, Richard Laymon's work makes its way to these shores in US editions. Bite, a 1996 novel, hits the stores first, and hits the ground running.

Laymon books tend to do that. They always begin in the middle of the action, right where you find yourself hooked before you quite know what's happening. He grabs you with rapid-fire, dead-on dialogue and action and a promise of incredible events to come. Backstory takes to the background until it's needed, and then he gives only as much as needed right then. The technique is harder to carry off than it looks. It's fast and furious and guaranteed to grab you and take you along sputtering, unable to ask questions, almost as if an overbearing friend has grabbed your hand and started pulling you toward the deep end of the pool. The drained pool. Ouch.

Sam opens his door and it's Cat, the only woman he has ever loved, and whom he hasn't seen in ten years. Her story is incredible: she needs his help to kill the vampire who has been coming to her nights, drinking her blood. Incredible, except she has the scars to prove it. Is he a real vampire, or does he just think he is? Sam doesn't know, but he's always been in love with her, so it doesn't take him much thought to agree to her plan; he'll hide in her closet and when Elliot the vampire is occupied with Cat, Sam will jump out and kill him with a stake. Sam barely hesitates. After all, this is Cat; she's beautiful and she needs his help.

From there, this caper careens from place to place like a runaway freight car. It's not easy, killing a vampire, but it's even harder to get rid of the body, as Sam and Cat find out. Determined to drive into the desert to do the deed, they are beset by the kind of luck you only wish on your worst enemy. Things go from bad to worse when they are forced to pick up a muscular biker thug who may or may not want something they can't give, but which their recent victim could - if he's a real vampire.

Constantly surprising because so much happens that's illogical, Bite ends up wearing a mantle of hyperlogic as Cat and Sam deal with each new situation both as it arises and then again as it changes with the sort of inevitability we reserve for real life. In the process, they say the things we would say, and - ultimately, and perhaps much to our horror - they do the things we would do, if we're honest with ourselves. It's not a pretty picture, but it's decorated with a sadistic grin that ultimately serves us right, acting out for us the ways in which we ourselves turn our well-hidden sadistic streak on others.

Richard Laymon's genius lies in the way he holds the mirror up to our faces and tilts it until it's both distorted and very, very clear. His short and punchy cinematic dialogue sings with the cadence of the mundane, but it becomes a lush symphony of realism almost before we're able to notice.

Give Richard Laymon a chance, now that his books will be available here, and see what you've been missing. Enjoy the chuckle he hides behind the twisty plots he spins, and consider how lucky you are to not be a character in his world.