Voor vandaag koos ik ��n van de p.m. 30 romans, die nog bijna allemaal 7 jaar na het overlijden van de auteur in herdruk verschijnen, die ik in de verzameling heb staan en koester. Helaas is van deze auteur tot op heden slechts ��n kort verhaal in Nederlandse vertaling verschenen. Het is dan ook te hopen, voor diegene die graag horror lezen, maar de Engelse taal niet machtig zijn, dat er een Nederlandse uitgever het duistere licht zal zien�

�The Stake� � Richard Laymon - 1990

In an abandoned hotel in a Californian ghost town, horror writer Larry Dunbar and his friends make a chilling discovery. By change they stumble on a coffin hidden under the stairs, Within lies the corpse of a naked female with stake through its heart, Though the find gives Larry the creeps he finds himself wondering about the dead woman. Was she the innocent victim of gruesome murder? Or was she a vampire? There�s only one way for Larry to solve the mystery � he must pull out the stake�

�He had stalked the demon to the lair. Now, he waited. Waited for dawn, when she would be most vulnerable. The waiting was the worst part. Knowing what was to come. The legends, he�d learned, were not to be trusted. The legends were wrong in so many ways. Vampires slept in beds, not coffins � a clever ruse to fool the unknowing. And although daylight sapped their powers, it did not render them helpless. Even after dawn, they could wake from their sleep of the dead. They could fight him, hurt him. He rubbed his cheek. His fingers trembled along crusty ridges of scab. She�d had sharp fingernails, the one in Urbana. He shuddered with the memory. He�d been lucky to save himself. Maybe he�d used up his luck on that one. Maybe, this time, teeth would find his throat.�

�If you�ve missed Laymon, you�ve missed a treat�- Stephen King
�No one writes like Laymon and you�re going to have a good time with anything he writes� � Dean Koontz
�In Laymon�s books, blood doesn�t so much drip, drip as explode, splatter and coagulate� - Independent

Meer weten http://www.ains.net.au/~gerlach/rlaymon2.htm