Into the Fire by Richard Laymon

Richard Laymon: was he a skilled shockmeister or he was just channeling a demented teenage boy with a permanent boner? After reading three of his books I'm still torn. In the Dark was a great horror tale about a creepy game that ends up going way beyond creepy. The book had a female viewpoint character, something Laymon may have done well to stick with because when his main characters were male, as in Island, the focus became so crudely sexual that Beavis & Butthead would find it a bit much. Not that I'm a puritan, but when a character is being chased by a madman and all he's thinking about is boobies, it strains believability.

Into the Fire has two main characters, one male and one female, and is thus a mixed bag. The two storylines don't merge until late in the book, so it almost feels as though you're reading two novels: One, the story of Pamela, a woman who is kidnapped by a psycho only to be saved by a man named Sharpe who drives a bus full of mannequins and taken to a tiny town where bad people find their way into the cafe's hamburgers. The other, the story of Norman, a college kid who pics up the wrong hitchhikers and ends up going along on a multi-state murder spree.

Both stories start off with a lot of promise and suspense, but Norman's eventually becomes ridiculous--mostly because of his obsession with female body parts. When Norman is first forced into giving a ride to an Elvis emulating sociopath (who is suspiciously reminiscent of the Kid from The Stand) I was pretty intrigued. But by the end I was tired of these characters and waiting for the one interesting figure--the strange avenging angel named Sharpe, to show up and blow everyone away.

Rating: 3.5 of 10