Though hard-boiled horror-writer Laymon has enjoyed a brisk career in mass-market and the occasional hardcover (The Stake, 1991, etc.), this stomach-churning mix of cannibalism and sexual sadism is Laymon at his pornoviolent worst—without the irony or manic glee that lifts most of his work above pulp. What's also here in spades, though, is Laymon's express-speed writing, an onslaught of declarative sentences and single-sentence paragraphs that whips the story along. The narrative opens on a note of sexual menace, as pretty D'Arcy Raines, a tour-guide at Mordock's Caverns, notices creepy 15-year-old Kyle Mordock ``staring at her rump'' during a tour. Moments later, the power shuts off, plunging the 40 people on the tour into pitch blackness 150 feet below the earth. A grim above-ground flashback reveals that the blackout was caused by a fire set by an enraged man who believed that Caverns' owner Ethan Mordock had killed his daughter. Other flashbacks, more vicious still, show that Ethan has indeed for years been snatching, raping, and torturing women, and that he has just introduced Kyle to the practice—but that he doesn't kill his victims. Instead, he drops them down a chute into a closed-off section of the Caverns, where most are eaten by previous victims but a few survive to go mad in the dark. When D'Arcy and her charges try to escape by breaking into this section, a bloodbath ensues, with the cannibals munching and crunching and the tourists gouging and biting back, as Kyle ogles D'Arcy and schemes. Will D'Arcy survive long enough to be saved by her sexy mom and her mom's new boyfriend, who even now are spelunking to the rescue? Maybe, but even Laymon's juggernaut prose can't redeem this off-putting exercise in depravity, which is as sordid as they come.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-312-08845-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1992
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose...
Sparks (The Longest Ride, 2013, etc.) serves up another heaping helping of sentimental Southern bodice-rippage.
Gone are the blondes of yore, but otherwise the Sparks-ian formula is the same: a decent fellow from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches falls in love with a decent girl from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches—and is still suffering the consequences. The guy is innately intelligent but too quick to throw a punch, the girl beautiful and scary smart. If you hold a fatalistic worldview, then you’ll know that a love between them can end only in tears. If you hold a Sparks-ian one, then true love will prevail, though not without a fight. Voilà: plug in the character names, and off the story goes. In this case, Colin Hancock is the misunderstood lad who’s decided to reform his hard-knuckle ways but just can’t keep himself from connecting fist to face from time to time. Maria Sanchez is the dedicated lawyer in harm’s way—and not just because her boss is a masher. Simple enough. All Colin has to do is punch the partner’s lights out: “The sexual harassment was bad enough, but Ken was a bully as well, and Colin knew from his own experience that people like that didn’t stop abusing their power unless someone made them. Or put the fear of God into them.” No? No, because bound up in Maria’s story, wrinkled with the doings of an equally comely sister, there’s a stalker and a closet full of skeletons. Add Colin’s back story, and there’s a perfect couple in need of constant therapy, as well as a menacing cop. Get Colin and Maria to smooching, and the plot thickens as the storylines entangle. Forget about love—can they survive the evil that awaits them out in the kudzu-choked woods?
More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose corn syrup, stickily sweet but irresistible.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4555-2061-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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