Product Description

THE STAKE In an abandoned hotel in a Californian ghost town, horror writer Larry Dunbar and his friends make a chilling discovery. By chance they stumble on a coffin hidden under the stairs. Within lies the corpse of a naked female - with a stake through its heart. Was she the innocent victim of a gruesome murder? Or was she a vampire? There's only one way for Larry to solve the mystery - he must pull out the stake...

FUNLAND A series of unexplained disappearances has cast a dark shadow over the summer pleasures over the seaside town of Boleta Bay. And holiday-makers are being threatened by a growing army of leering, foul-mouthed bums who have taken over the promenade. Convinced that the down-and-outs are behind the abductions, a gang of local teenagers decide to wreak violent revenge. Led by the charismatic Tanya, the gang graduate from simple beatings to more sinister punishments. And as they grow more daring, their campaign leads them to the old abandoned Funhouse, where the real truth of the disappearances awaits them...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #76544 in Books
• Published on: 2006-08-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 896 pages

About the Author
Richard Laymon was born in Chicago and grew up in California. Four of his books have been shortlisted for the Bram Stoker Award, which he won in 2001 with THE TRAVELLING VAMPIRE SHOW. Among his many acclaimed works of horror and suspense are the three novels in the Beast House Trilogy: THE CELLAR, THE BEAST HOUSE and THE MIDNIGHT TOUR. He died in February 2001.

Customer Reviews

Keep you up until midnight
Both stories move you quickly into the action with a rush of interesting and believeable characters. Laymon has a knack of hitting just the right nerve of human lusts and emotions. Night show feels like 'reading a movie' - The pace of story and short chapters keep you wanting to read on and agreat example of the 'dark' storytelling craft.

Allhallow's Eve has a bit of an abrupt ending, which was something I was a touch disappointed by, having raced through the story.

Do I want to read anything else by this author ...... ?
I'd never heard of Richard Laymon before I came across this. I thought the title was intriguing - an excellent title, in fact, that made you want to know more - but when I started reading it The Travelling Vampire Show I thought I'd picked up a children's book by mistake. The story seemed to be made up of Americanised Enid Blyton-like dialogue with very little narrative to hold it together. It was all rather "cosy" and full of teenage wonder with a bit of teenage angst thrown in for good measure (the narrator lusting after his sister-in-law, for instance). I suppose it's called "rights of passage" stuff. However, after a while it became apparent that it wasn't meant for children as some rather more graphic adult themes surfaced. The story meandered along for several chapters before getting to the crux - the Travelling Vampire Show itself. This took place at midnight in a very scary place (at least, so far as our teenage heroes were concerned, although the rest of the inhabitants of the town didn't seem to be greatly fazed by it when they arrived to see the show)! This resulted in quite an exciting climax, which was well written, but which was spoilt by a revelation at the end (no - I'm not giving any secrets away) of something completely daft!

I'm quite glad I read it as I found it amusing in places, but I don't think I'll go out of my way to look for anything else by the same author, especially as this volume included his "Dreadful Tales" (short stories) as well. I read the first four or five of those, but they were silly little tales that didn't seem to be getting any better as they went on, so I gave up. The author seemed to have something of an obsession with decapitation which got a bit wearying after a while.

The whole experience of reading The Travelling Vampire Show was very light and was quite amusing in places, so that's why I've given the volume two stars, although one and a half would have been nearer the mark. Had they been less amusing the book and the short stories would only have got one star from me. Over all - a load of twaddle!

Almost five stars
This is a excellent book. Funland is in my top five Laymon books and ive read them all. I would've gave it five stars but I don't think Stake was as good as a lot of his other work. Still an excellent read though.