When the horror becomes real.

Dani Larson is the queen of horror movie special effects. Grisly murders and mutilated corpses are all in a day’s work for her. Nothing frightens her—not even watching herself torn to pieces on the screen. But now the gore is real, and Dani is terrified. She’s being stalked by the Chill Master, a psychopath who wants to be Dani’s apprentice, her lover, and eventually…her replacement.

Can Dani find a way to survive? Or will this real-life horror movie scare Dani to death?

My thanks to Samhain Publishing for my review copy which I received through Netgalley

Back when I was a teen (many years ago) I discovered I enjoyed horror stories. This came as a bit of a shock to me as I really do not like horror films so making the decision at age 13 to read a collection of ghost stories was a pretty big deal to me at the time. Hooked from that point on!

Having whet my appetite with some Stephen King and James Herbert books I stumbled upon the works of Richard Laymon. These were stories I could get into very easily and the plots were sufficiently nasty that the (now) 14 year old me felt I was reading ‘real’ books. What I found about particularly pleasing at the time was Laymon’s writing style was very easy to access (handy when exam studying should have been happening).

Zip forward a couple of decades (and some) and I am revisiting Night Show. I was keen to see if I still enjoyed Laymon’s books and if they had stood the test of time. Yes and Sort of.

The story did not show any real signs of aging, however, there are lots of horror film references and the passage of time since writing means that lots of modern ‘classics’ cannot be mentioned leaving the impression that the characters are slightly obsessed with ‘old’ horror movies. There are also a couple of scenes where modern characters would have had a mobile phone handy so the terror of their situation could easily have been diffused by whipping out their phone to call for help….best keep in mind that this story is very much of its time.

But the actual story is quite good fun.  A stalker tale – the creepy kid that want’s to scare people becomes fixated on a beautiful film-maker and decides that she is the only woman for him, even if she does not know it yet. The detail in the film-making scenes was fascinating reading, the obvious love that Richard Laymon had for the horror films (which he frequently references) shines through.

Laymon’s books never quite had the depth of King, Hutson or Herbert but they were fun, solid reads which always guaranteed to keep me entertained.  Night Show still ticks all the right boxes for me – I enjoyed the silly scares and the OTT characters but I also remembered the other great books Laymon wrote and I want to revisit them too.

Samhain will release Night Show on 3 May 2016 – you can order a copy here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Night-Show-Richard-Laymon-ebook/dp/B01980QKPQ/ref=sr_1_1_twi_kin_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1457910369&sr=1-1&keywords=night+show+richard+laymon