Cuts

Many people have a hobby that verges on obsession. Albert Prince’s obsession happens to be cutting people, especially pretty girls. There’s nothing he loves more than breaking into a stranger’s house and letting his imagination—and his knife—run wild. Albert’s on the run now, heading cross-country, but he’s not about to stop having fun....--This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

From Publishers Weekly

The Laymon renaissance continues with this provocative author's third novel (along with Come Out Tonight, Forecasts, May 31, and Bite, Forecasts, May 24) to appear this spring/summer. None of the three showcase Laymon at his finest (as did last year's The Midnight Tour, also from Cemetery Dance), though Come Out Tonight (Cemetery Dance as well) comes close. All, however, exhibit his talent for immediate prose and breakneck pacing, and, most interestingly, his penchant for blending genuine pathos with brutality. Here, the blending isn't so artful. This novel, set mostly in 1975, reads like two novellas glued together. One is atypical for Laymon, a sharp skewering of academic life, particularly the marital tribulations of faculty members of Grand Beach (Calif.) High. Substitute teacher Janet Arthur dumps her abusive lover, who wants her to abort their unborn child; librarian Lester Bryant gets involved with aging Southern belle Emily Jean Bonner; Lester's formidable wife, Helen, is sleeping with one of her students, etc. The other plot line is boilerplate Laymon: an Illinois teen, Albert Prince, goes on a homicidal rampage, stalking, raping and slicing several women. The author binds the two plot lines in an arbitrary way, though his tying of pathos and brutality--as Albert is gravely wounded, then soothed, by his final victim--is admirably audacious; and the story concludes with a coda as clever as it is nasty. As is usual with this author, there's at least one scene of heinous sexual violence, intimately detailed, that will leave readers shuddering with disgust. In this novel, as before, Laymon flashes serious storytelling talent, but also the refusal to compromise on theme and depiction that seems to have made him more talked about than read, at least in the States. (July) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Stephen King

“If you’ve missed Laymon, you’ve missed a treat!”

Dean Koontz

“No one writes like Laymon.”

Horror World

“Laymon is, was, and always will be king of the hill.”

Publishers Weekly on The Lake

“White-hot pacing (with) rivers of blood…Memorable evocation of the fathomless mystery of the moonlit hours.”

Kirkus Reviews

“The master of stomach-churning violence.”

About the Author

Richard Laymon is the prolific author of more than 30 novels and 65 short stories which have been published in Ellery Queen, Alfred Hitchcock and Cavalier. A Bram Stoker and Science Fiction Chronicle Award-winning author, his novels have been translated into fifteen languages.

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