Luke on Popular Fiction: February 2010

The Richard Laymon Collection: Volume 2 (Richard Laymon, 2006)

Richard Laymon is the literature equivalent of a sleazy 70's grindhouse exploitation film in which graphic sex and violence are at the fore-front and trivial things like plot and character development are left on the sidelines. I love it.

The two books presented here are The Woods Are Dark and Out Are The Lights and with titles as hackneyed as these you know what you're in for. Woods deals with a group of out-of-towners trying to survive the murderous clutches of "The Krulls", a race of mutants that eat people. Lights deals with cinema that shows short horror films that may or may not be snuff films.

Laymon's style is limited yet he revels in the sleaze like a boy who's just seen his first pair of tits. Gore is sprayed willingly (much of it actually quite disgusting) and sex is instigated in way akin to a porn flick ("My car broke down" said Brock, "can I come in?", "Why yes," said the big breasted blonde with dick-sucking lips, "the phone is in the bedroom". Moments later, they're fucking). It's cheap but fun and is a rather good way to lose a couple of days in the narrative. Fundimentally terrible but entertaining non the less. Think Point Horror for adults.

Stephen King digs him and that's a good enough recommendation for me.

3/5

Under The Dome (Stephen King, 2009)

My love affair with the works of Stephen King started about eight years ago and whilst my first foray into his world was via one of his lesser efforts (Christine), it was my subsequent reading of Carrie that had me won over. He is an easily accessible writer, probably one of the main reasons he's arguably the most popular author ever, but I will be the first to say that not everything he touches turns to gold. For every 'Salem's Lot there's a Dreamcatcher and for every Needful Things there's a Cell. Many of his novels over the past decade have been questionable and none have hit the dizzying heights of his early career.

Which is why Under The Dome is such a surprise. Not only is it a good novel but it's main trump card is its ability to feel like the King novels of old. Think the apocalyptic notions of The Stand with the small town ways and inevitable social crumbling of Needful Things. It's big, both in scale and page length (877 or 1072 pages depending if you get the British or American prints) and is populated with typical King characters: psychotic teenagers, religious fanatics, an antagonist who's an absolute cunt, etc. Whilst I don't think it'll ever be classed alongside the likes of his other epic works (The Stand, It, Needful Things), it's breezy and surprisingly quick.

But, as with a lot of his work, the build-up is better than the pay-off. The reasons for the dome and the speed in which the story is resolved is disappointing, especially after establishing such a vivid world with the town and the people of Chester's Mill (another fictional setting in the same vein as Derry and Castle Rock). Also, the time frame of the story is 6 - 7 days and I find it very difficult to believe society would crumble so completely in such a short time. But then, that's half the point. The speed of the deterioration of Chester's Mill surprises many of the main characters too. Dale Barbara is also a weak protagonist and pales in comparison to Big Jim Rennie, the absolute son-of-a-bitch that uses the arrival of the dome to bend the town to his will.

But these are trivial complaints. I should be hailing this as an (almost) return to form for an author, my favourite, whom I'd written off shortly after the release of From a Buick 8. It's big, brash and extremely cheesy in places but it is also fun and, for a book as long as it is, it never once bores. Not a masterpeice but well worth your time.

4/5

The Black Dahlia (James Ellroy, 1987)

Being a man attached to the hip of Stephen King and Clive Barker, I thought it was about time to try something different and, although I'm not a fan of most crime literature (eg: Simon Kernick is lazy in his writing and Karen Rose manages to weave gut wrenchingly cheesy romantic subplots into her works), James Ellroy has always intrigued me. A man who grew up reading Chandler almost exclusively, his most famous works are very much routed in the 40's/50's (and the 60's in the later USA Underworld trilogy) and this, for me, is proper crime, detectives with cigarettes lodged permanently in their lips wearing trench coats and hats, dealing with political corruption and using violence to get the information they want. It also helps that L.A. Confidential is one of my favourite films.

As an introduction to Ellroy's prose, The Black Dahlia is excellent. As you'd expect from the writer of L.A. Confidential, the story is dense but never confusing, sprawling from the murder of the Dahlia herself to the eventual, albiet fictional, reveal of her murderer's identity (in reality, the case was never solved) by way of police corruption, false leads and character subplots that help, not hinder, the main narrative. At just under 400 pages it's brief but it's packed with an almost overwhelming amount of information. Ellroy does not dwell on the needless, there is little in the way of filler here. Everything is necessary whether it be about the case itself or building upon the already complex characters.

There are no heroes as such. The majority of those we meet are crooked to the bone and those that are honest are left in ruin, including "Bucky" Bleichert, our protagonist. It ends with a whimper, not a bang, our "hero" at peace despite his life being in turmoil and his career as a cop dead. If the rest of the L.A. Quartet is anything like this (I already have The Big Nowhere and L.A. Confidential whilst White Jazz is on order) I can't wait to delve into Ellroy's world again.

How they fucked up the movie adaptation I don't know.

5/5

The Lost Symbol (Dan Brown, 2009)

You can't blame Dan Brown for trying. Arguably one of the most successful writers of the last ten years on the back of one book, he obviously holds some appeal to many millions across the globe. That and it's controversy baiting subject matter. But what people have come to realise is that, for all its popularity, The Da Vinci Code is crap. Filled to the brim with well worn clichés that were boring back in the 60's and full of leaps of logic that go beyond comprehension, it is a poorly written mess, bogged down with many scenes of people talking about stuff that isn't particularly interesting.

The Lost Symbol suffers from all of Da Vinci's problems and then some but, unlike Da Vinci, it never seems to really go anywhere. The reveal of what the elusive Lost Symbol is, is underwhelming to say the least and, with it's scientific aspect focusing on the physical mass of ones conciseness (excuse me?), Dan Brown has finally delved so far into the ludicrous that any shred of credibility he once had (and there was little to begin with) has been shattered.

I bored with it now. The Dan Brown phenomenon has been and gone and, whilst I enjoyed his pre-Da Vinci Code efforts (I still really like Deception Point, easily his best work) I would be quite happy if he faded into obscurity.

At least stop with the Robert Langdon stuff. He's arguably one of the most boring recurring protagonists in popular fiction.

2/5