Discount Price: $7.99
Price fluctuation possible.
How soon does it ship: Normal ship time within one day
Shipping? Absolutely FREE if you qualify for Super Saver Shipping.
Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780843961379
ISBN number: 0843961376
Label: Leisure Books
Manufacturer: Leisure Books
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 290
Printing Date: October 28, 2008
Publishing house: Leisure Books
Sale Popularity Level: 31870
Studio: Leisure Books
Other books you might be interested in perusing:
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
Using ancient grey magic a dangerous, vindictive maniac is made all-powerful by his ability to become invisible. Raping and murdering his way around the States, he is biding his time before fulfilling his one desire - to get even with the high school belle who rejected him years before.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
-
Excellant novel by one of my favorite authors! The book is basically about a man who is a criminal and gets mixed up with an evil cult. The cult makes him invisible in order to do their dirty deeds for them, but he has dirty plans of his own. A great read and I look forward to his subsequent novel.
Rated by buyers -
If you're into cozy mysteries at isolated English manors where everyone dies cleanly and the culprit is caught by tea time, then Richard Laymon may not be for you. On the other hand, if you like not only horror, but brutally violent horror, than Laymon will be right up your alley. The recently re-released novel Beware is a typical example of both what makes Laymon good and why he is definitely not for all tastes.
Beware opens in the small California town of Oasis where an unseen prowler is occupying Hoffman's Market. The person is very first engaged in minor vandalism, but this soon escalates to the killing of a dog and finally a couple people, including the store's owner. Reporter Lacey Allen is very first on the scene of the deaths and is attacked herself. The killer gets away, but he's not done with Lacey.
It turns out there is a good reason that the killer is unseen: he is invisible. He is also a truly evil fellow, and doubly dangerous because he is supernaturally hard to kill. Lacey is able to escape his clutches, but needs to go into hiding, but that won't stop her stalker. Fortunately, she will get some assistance: a hard-boiled mystery writer and the man who he based his tough-guy hero on, a private eye whose dealings with a murderous cult may tie into Lacey's own problems.
As usual for a Laymon novel, lots of people suffer but women get it particularly bad, especially Lacey who is raped multiple times within the very first 60 pages. Is Laymon a misogynist or does he just assume his readers are? I don't know, but sometimes he does go off the deep end. On the other hand, he writes well, and like all his novels, Beware is suspenseful and fast moving. In the movie-rating system, this would be a hard-R, but if that doesn't bother you, you should enjoy this book.
Rated by buyers 
-
This is Laymon's most recent re-release (as of Nov 08). This feature story is shorter than most standard Leisure books, coming in at about 266 pages. The rest of the book is a teaser for "Dark Mountain" which is being re-released in March of 2009. I am not sure if this original story was published while he was alive or if it was one of the many that was dug out of some mysterious safe and published after his death.
Short Summary: Lacey is a reporter for the local paper in a small town. When something strange begins happening at the market she, along with several other townsfolk go to investigate. What they very first assume to be vandalism quickly escalates into murder and rape, with a trail of bodies piling up and no sign of a killer anywhere. When things get even worse for Lacey, she goes on the run...
Though the book started out okay, by the time I got to the end, I was ready to put it down. I quite enjoyed the opening, when I believed our problem to be a malevolent ghost. Then they brought in the voodoo and I sort of nodded and thought, okay a little voodoo can cause the ghosts, I can live with that. But then we crossed the line and just kept on going... when the reality of what was being sold to me came about... I was pretty well beyond my ability to suspend my disbelief. You can add too much fantastical crap into one novel and end up with garbage. I won't say this became utter trash, but I really wasn't happy with the outcome. I remember reading in a screenwriting group that you can only have 1 truly magical bit in a story and have people buy it... that you can have aliens, or you can have mermaids, but you cant have aliens AND mermaids or the audience won't remember what they've seen. That's pretty much where this novel failed to me. We had Voodoo cults/government groups? We have sacrifices, we have invisible people, we have random good guys who pop up out of nowhere and just happen to know a guy already working on the case, there is just too much for me to have to choke down to believe it...
I'm not sure where in the scheme of things Laymon wrote this novel, it's not his best and it's not his worst. There are plenty of rapes, and naked women... not so much gore as one might expect with a serial killer/rapist and a handful of Voodoo sacrifices. Mostly we just have a sadistic rapist and a bunch of naked women and a whole lot of running around. I think what disappointed me was that I was really excited about the beginning when I thought it was going to be a ghost story. Now I have read the original Jules Verne book that he took this idea from, and I have to say... that Laymon's treatment really didn't impress me at all.
His characters are still stiff and unbelievably one sided. The woman does a lot of running, screaming, trying to fight back, and getting raped anyway. The men are either complete dolts, or they are sadistic rapist murderers. And when Scott and his buddy come onto the scene, I couldn't help but roll my eyes and think "how convenient." In fact I found myself thinking that quite a bit through this book. Still, it's only 266 pages and if you are a Laymon fan, you won't be able to get your fix again until March of 09. For rabid Laymon fans, I would say go pick this up and get your fix. For very first time Laymon readers, I would start somewhere else because this is nowhere near one of his best works.
Rated by buyers -
This was one of the craziest books I have ever read, the sheer magnitude of fantasy driven plot and violet scenarios mixed with grey magic and the usual Laymonesque inappropriate behavior made it for an entertaining read but it was the weakest from all his works so far. I am a huge fan so I will not pass up a chance to read anything by this gentle man who wrote crazy stories, my favorite so far has to be "Island" which I read when on a trip to Poland years ago, I left it there and had to get another copy, now that was an exquisite book but twice as big as this one. For a short and off the beaten path type of a tale, of a local reporter being chased by her high school stalker, who tangled up with some very bad people and turned invisible with their magic, well one can imagine what a horny[...] will do with this great power, and he sure does, with chuckles and horror, his tale is very interesting, to say the least. Laymon let the reins of his imagination flow and it showed, I never knew what to expect and it was a fun albeit gruesome at times read.
The book is quite short, I read it in a few hours but the ups and downs and the smooth dialogue guided it well into the ending which was excellent, I think it saved the book in my eyes into a 4 star rating, I would have otherwise have to give it 3, but somehow the end was tricky and very, very suspenseful, but little abrupt - maybe one can say explosive. Laymon's books pop out every few months even though he's no longer with us and they shock and thrill, they jolt me but they are easy to read (despite the craziness) and the man was a good story teller, his ideas were truly his own, and I miss him, I wish he could have lived to be an old man surrounded by his own works with plenty of fans supporting him.
For a fast and little icky read, this is a fun book but like I said, not his best. I still adore him; after all I read from him he can do no wrong.
- Kasia S.
Rated by buyers -
I read this story as part of the "Richard Laymon Collection" it was volume 4 and had "Dark Mountain" included as the other story. I think it may have been edited and im not sure i read the original entire story but what i did read i loved. Invisible psycho kilers, crazy cult members, and plenty of action had me reading this story in two days. Also plenty of gore and sex to add in the mix make it top-knotch Laymon.
Find other books like this one:
