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NOTE: Reviews are the opinions of the individual reviewers and not necessarily those of The Chiaroscuro as an entity unto itself.
| by William D. Gagliani
Email: tarkusp@execpc.com One Rainy Night
I never expected that Richard Laymon wouldn't live to see this review. There aren't many words I can come up with to describe the sense of loss I feel - a personal sense of loss because I'd had the pleasure of meeting Dick and corresponding with him over the last few years. I'd left him alone recently, after congratulating him on his election as HWA president, deciding he didn't need another distraction. Now among many regrets, I regret not having spoken to him more recently. This can't be a normal book review. It's only proper that I spend some time and space saying a few things about Dick the writer. What he did and how he did it, in my opinion, and what made him special in this field of ours. ONE RAINY NIGHT is prime Laymon. In a small California town, the sky suddenly opens up and an oily black rain falls, turning everyone it touches into a fearlessly homicidal maniac. The "why" doesn't matter all that much, sort of like a Hitchcockian McGuffin. It's just there. Deal with it. After all, that's what you and I would have to do, isn't it? We wouldn't know why or how, but we'd suffer the consequences anyway. Wet or dry, our course would be laid out, brambles and all. In a Laymon novel, no path is safe, well-lit, or easy to walk. In a Laymon novel, no one is safe. You know why? Because that's the way life is. Good guys don't make it. We learn this over and over, and we've just learned it again. And sometimes good guys turn bad, while bad guys end up heroes. Life is unpredictable. So is death. Of course there is a reason the black rain falls. It's there all along, and we may realize we should have seen it. Maybe we're astute enough to guess the reason, and if we did it in no way lessens the impact of those falling drops and what they signify. A Laymon novel is all about people. How people cope or don't cope. How they treat each other. How they rise to the occasion - or don't - and how they handle the changes within themselves brought about by the extreme circumstances. Or don't. We are these people, really, though we may not like to admit it. In a disaster, we'd all take different paths. They'd be Laymon paths, so they'd not be safe, well-lit, or easy to walk. Some of us would shine, others would just exist, and some would come to exemplify evil. That's what a Laymon novel is about, and the device that allows him to explore what his people would do is never as important as the people themselves. Laymon novels always reminded me that what we writers do is all about the people. Dark and light, good and bad, me and you. We tell stories of us in our best of times and worst of times. And that's yet another reason to miss Dick Laymon. He won't tell us
stories anymore.
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